Synaesthesia
by s2lou
Summary: N. Production of a sense impression relating to one sense of the body by stimulation of another sense of the body. Ex. comprehending the water's liquidity by observing the warmth and reflects of the sunlight over it. KaitoAoko. For Fyliwion.
1. line

**My finals are overrrrrrrrr. Celebration time I say. Therefore, fic.**

**Fyliwion-sempai's demand was 'smex (though not smut) and plot'. Unfortunately it will have to be 'plot and smex', since my muses wouldn't have it any other way. However. More drabble-fic for ya. I dug up some prompts, mostly from books, since writerblock decided to make things cranky for a while.**

**Also, this takes place in Paris, and no, it is not an AU. Call it what you will—sudden patriotic fondness after jun-chan's and ly-chan's wonderful French Revolution ficcies, or my obligatory French fic, or whatever. I blame Maurice Leblanc and Arsene Lupin. *has had her Lupin anthology on her bedside table these last three weeks***

**Disclaimer—Gosho-sensei lets me borrow the MK cast, yes? thankyou. I'll clean 'em up when I'm done. **

**-**

**line (beginning)**

**-**

_prompt:—_

_time past and time future_

_what might have been and what has been_

_point to one end, which is always present._

_-_

_(A story does not start.)_

_-_

_Tick._

(Some would see it as clockwork.)

_Tock._

(Some would see it as clockwork, the giant bronze hands slowly rotating on their hinges, _tick-_ and _tock-_ing each second with grave resonance.)

_Tick._

(Some would see it as clockwork, the town bustling with automatic activity—puffing cars filling in the street— hurried people running to and from work—buses following their tracks with metallic hisses—streetlamps blinking on and off as it grew dark and light—all with empty-eyed, mechanical regularity; that of a metronome.)

_Tock._

(Some would see it as clockwork, the twisting of streets and avenues; boulevards ramming on it tall intersections; back alleys twining in the shadows of the greater buildings; interlacings all winding up to a close as one perfect pattern, not one straying lost within the city's doors.)

_Tick._

(Some would see it as clockwork, the massive bells ringing copper and clear in the cold morning air, the clocks on walls and watches in pockets, speaking bronze hours, ticking each quicksilver second as minute heartbeats from dusk till dawn and back again.)

_Tock._

Clocks here, dozens, watches and watches in backpockets and breastpockets, elaborately- _or_ roughly-cuts ticking soft, minuscule peals as though one gigantic second within the tight confines of the soaring plane; unperturbed and unperturbing.

The creaking sound of trolleys; a rustle of blankets. Tick-_tock_, they say. Tick-_tock_.

_Tick._

The woman who sleeps in one of the front seats is deeply asleep _(overslept again, Ao—)_; her face is open and relaxed _(tranquil)_; her lips grace up in some smiling dream. Sometimes, underneath the thick hem of the blue _(heh)_ cover, her hands grapple a little; then cease.

Her face is bathed in the blue, ethereal halo of the plane's nightlights.

_Tock._

Clocks, here, two only, one on the wall—finely cut and elegant, an expert work of poised mechanic, each peal rung sweet and unfurling in the apartment's silence—the other, a plain copper watch, carefully tucked away where it is safely found and easily picked.

The velvety sound of windy curtains; a horn down the street. Tick-_tock_, they say. Tick­-_tock._

_Tick._

The man who sleeps at the desk is slumped, caught by sleep in the middle of work _(you've always worked too hard, baka—)_; his eyelashes flutter at times _(restless)_; the breaths the parted mouth takes are a little torn. Often he will look at though he is waking up.

He is not.

_Tockticktockticktockticktockticktockticktock._

_Tick—_

-

On September 19th, at 06:26:34, local hour, Nakamouri Aoko, twenty-four years old, exits the Tokyo-Paris plane onto French land.

On September 19th, at 06:30:00, local hour, Kuroba Kaito, twenty-four years old, awakes in his little apartment in high Montmartre.

-

_Tock._

_­_-

_(A story does not start._

_It is already started. It started many, many years ago, long before it was even known there was a story; and so it makes it difficult to say _when_, exactly, it did start.)_

-

**Update basis is just as ever—every one or two days. On a side note, Katie-chan, I need to talk to you. Remind me if I forget (again), will ya?**


	2. invite

**One note before we continue: Kaito is in every chapter of this. He may be as himself, he may not…. he may be disguised or simply a memory. But he is there. He'll be obvious sometimes, sometimes not. Then find him, dears. :3**

**Disclaimer—Aoko, Kaito and Ruby Jones are all Gosho-sensei's property. Don't hit the innocent fanficcer, hmm?**

**-**

**invite**

**-**

Prompt:—

_and remember the tinman_

_found he had what he thought had lacked_

_remember the tinman_

_go find your heart and take it back_

-

_(I can tell you how the story goes.)_

-

Paris is, at first, a long swift line of tunnel lights trickling by; soft, liquid _(as in. underwater)_ golds that cast light and warmth onto the chill glass.

Aoko feels a little numb on the subway seat; a little stiff, her fingers, on the strap of the heavy roller-coaster backpack. She has slept little on the plane (never could; the pillows are too synthetic to feel good, the lights too electric), and does her best not to do so here, lest she should miss her station.

The subway is almost empty at this hour. Workers in blue overalls discuss over a sports paper—loud, eager voices that laugh and argue on the same breath; a strict-looking woman in a business suit—glancing down at her watch every few minutes; a few teenagers with a school bag and headphones plugged in their ears—none of them wear uniforms, which is slightly strange.

Every few stations—

-

Morning is, at first, a long thin crack in the curtains; flickering, pale _(as in. not quite dark)_ dust seems to enjoy the space of in-between that stands below the material folds.

Kaito groans and slaps his alarm clock silent; he groans, and burrows a little tighter underneath the cradling nest of covers and pillows he has, last night, crashed into after an eleven-hour flight without even bothering to take off his jeans. His shirt and jacket still lay on the floor where they were dropped nine hours earlier.

Around the bed the Montmartre apartment seems to swell and throb in greys. It is, he reflects drowsily, peering over the hem of a blanket, like being under water; he seems to lie in a haze that sways over him and his saturated brain. It is dark still, and fatigue mingles blurringly with morning.

It is hunger that drives him out of—

-

—the train hisses and clashes and shakes disagreeably; people come out; people come in. As the minutes pass steadily, ticking down the hour on her wrist, more and more begin to flood in. They talk. Loud voices. She watches each station pass ornamented with French names she only half understands.

Le Bourget, La Courneuve, Parc des Expositions—

_Gare du Nord. _North Station. She grabs her bag and steps out with the flood. Flight of stairs after flight of stairs, she comes out of the dark earth onto the surface like Persephone, Persephone exiting icy Winter into blossoming Spring, and it is Autumn air that greets her out.

Outside of—

-

—bed. Hunger, and the nagging memory that his flight preceded Aoko's by only hours, and that he has a call to make. He does not bother with lamps and lights; instead, settles with feeling with his feet for the clothes he left on the floor the evening before.

He does not find them and proceeds to dig in the nearest dresser.

He drags out a sweater and pulls it over his head even as he paddles into the kitchen. Thank kami Jii-chan was here before, filled the fridge with enough morning necessities; that makes for milk and toasts, which is more than enough to shake him out of his sleepy torpor.

Again he—

-

—the station, despite the early our, the square is trodden upon by dozens, and it takes her a few minutes to find a taxi. She blabbers in French, feeling horribly embarrassed even as the man smiles, loads her luggage in the car, shows her onto the backseat and sets off at terrifying speed.

It is early still, and the streets are dark but for the same trickling golds. _(Streetlamps this time. Streetlamps; halos of light that blur, flood and wane out into shadowed grey.) _Paris trickles out the window, and Aoko dozes off against the car door.

She—

-

—returns into the bedroom. He is awake now, awake enough to switch on the lights and set about picking up the fallen clothes, putting them in the laundry, opening his bag for the few items he will need this morning. A book of poems. Painting reproductions on postcards. Cell phone.

He sets them down and looks around, looks around and breathes, breathes in the cool air. _(The apartment swells and unfurls like a balloon too full of water, too little on the side.) _He stops for a minute, standing at the centre of the room, sill centre of the room in the spinning world.

He—

-

—hardly notices when the car comes to a stop, and it is the driver, now frankly amused, who carries her luggage into the hotel lobby and rings at the reception counter. He retreats with a tip that sweetens his eyes.

The following minutes are strictly professional, albeit a bit awkward due to Aoko's lack of mastered French and the receptionist's lack of mastered English (or Japanese, for that matter, but that –she thinks– is a given). There are amazingly few difficulties, though. _N-A-K-A-M-O-U-R-I-A-O-K-O. Room 103. Voici votre clé._

She trots up to the elevator and—

-

—pulls the curtains open. It is still dark out, dark enough to emphasize, from the house's elevated situation, the city's lights and the revolving ray of the Eiffel Tower. Far above the rooftops, however, there is a red line.

Kaito watches even as the lights grow and lighten. It will be another few minutes until the sun is seen, but for now the half-grey light is more than enough to fade out the remaining handful of stars and bring out a beginning of clearing over the sky and the airy bedroom in which he stands.

Then—

-

—up to her room, blessedly dark with drawn shades and, wonder of wonders, a comfortable-looking bed. Aoko does not bother with more observations as she kicks off her shoes and discards her coat on the nearest armchair, making a beeline for the mattress.

The last line of action she undertakes is to call the reception desk and ask them to search for Ruby Jones' coordinates.

The she crashes into bed.

-

—in the glorious golds that drown out the waters, and give to the bedroom a surreal manner, he picks up the cell phone again and selects a numbers; dials. The voice that answers is feminine and smooth; rich; amused and not sleepy in the least although she says,

"It is most awful to wake a woman this early, Kuroba-kun," in accentuated Japanese.

Kaito smiles. _"Bonjour, Chat Noir."_

_-_

_(I can tell you how the story goes._

_The story goes like this: a sound struck high and fast, that rises and swells, and widens, lacking of air—_

—_and, vibrating on a strangled, golden high, that stills—_

_That's how.)_

_-_

**Bonjour means hello. Anything in French that is not explained directly will have an importance later, and will be revealed. Thanks for reading :3**


	3. grasp

**Plot and plot and plot again. Things might get a little clearer for you all here. Then again, they might not. But if anything really confuses you, let me know, please—I'll tell you what it means, or if it's meant to be confusing :3 or you can just choose to let the story carry you away and figure out the plot yourself, tantei-san.**

**Disclaimer—I don't own Kaito, nor Aoko, nor Ruby Jones. I don't know the name of Paul Sernine, either. Three guesses as to where it comes from?**

**-**

**grasp**

**-**

Prompt:—

_'they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them—and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive.'_

-

_(A story is about—)_

_-_

Ruby Jones appraises her slowly and languidly. To all eyes they are—a tall, gorgeous woman dressed in the best of fashion, savouring her tea with the necessary abstract half-smile; and a younger, thinner, distinctly Japanese woman, nervous in her blouse and tight black skirt, hardly daring to touch the china. At length the teacup is lowered.

"You are becoming quite a fine young woman, Aoko-san," is said, smoothly, approvingly.

This said by a woman with mellow chocolate skin and cat-like eyes is both flattering and disconcerting. Aoko thinks back to their meeting five years before and thinks, She hasn't changed at all.

"You haven't changed at all, Ruby-san," she voices, ill-at-ease among the teacups. Of all places to meet in Paris, fashionable Fauchon café would not be her selection. Ruby-san, however, insisted.

"That is not what my mirror tells me everyday," Ruby laughs, high and distinct, "and I grow tired and decrepit." Aoko finds no time to protest, however, before she continues, "But enough of that. You have demanded to see me because you came to Paris with a precise object, _oui?"_

Aoko smiles at the French. "Yes. You are the only French person I know, and I figured you might help."

Ruby sets the spoon neatly down between two lumps of sugar. "I know you have passed the Police Academy exam and are in the theft department right now. Planning to walk in your father's footsteps, are you?" And chuckling at Aoko's faint blush, "I gather it is about gems, then?"

"Not exactly," Aoko admits. A pause. "Do you remember the first time we met? Kaitou KID was aiming for the Golden Eye, and I came to bring my father lunch—with my best friend Kuroba Kaito."

The corners of Ruby's eyes wrinkle _(_amusedly_.)_ "I remember perfectly. Quite a dazzling young man. Are you still in contact with him?"

Aoko appears slightly uneasy. "Yes and no. We had a fight three years ago, and since then we are somewhat awkward around each other. We are still friends, to an extent, but I haven't seen him in over a year and a half." _(Pause. There's a meaning under that one, slow and deep and like riverwater.) _"And then—two weeks ago—I received _this."_

From an inner pocket of her bag's she extracts a plain white envelope, marked only with her name, and slips it across the table among the plates. In it is a postcard.

It is a plain-simple envelope, one that represents the Eiffel Tower by night among the thousands sold all over Paris. On the back is written, in deceptively uncomplicated penmanship,

_'Une aube affaiblie_

_Verse par les champs_

_La mélancolie _

_Des soleils couchants…'_

Ruby inspects it, front and back, quite seriously, for a few minutes of silence. As she pulls away from her observations, she says, "Are you quite certain it is his handwriting and not a well-done imitation?"

"Positive," is the instant response. "Kaito had­—has many skills, among which the ability to imitate much everybody's handwriting. From that knowledge he created one of his own, that no-one would be able to duplicate." She pauses again, eyes lowered onto the past and thus a little dark. "I've seen him construct it for years," she adds, murmuring, "I'd recognise it anywhere."

Ruby smiles. "I see." She slides the postcard back. "Can you read this?"

"More or less," Aoko says. A frowns edges itself onto her face, slightly. "It's about suns, isn't it?"

"Yes." Another pause while Aoko considers the postcard and Ruby considers Aoko. "What did you do then, when you received this?"

"What? oh. Well, I—I figured Kaito was in Paris—" she taps the Eiffel Tower picture, "and wanted me to find something out there. He—I deserved a vacation, anyway. I demanded a three-week break after I received this letter, and left as soon as I could."

"… I see. And so you are looking for the signification of this poem," says Ruby.

"I am. I thought you might help."

"I would love to—would do, if I could—" a languid smile, "but I am not much of a poetess. My skills do not lie in that direction," says she, delicately. "If you allow me, however, I would introduce you to someone who would be valuable to you, I think."

Aoko blinks. "I­—well, sure. Where can I find this person?"

"Right here."

The man thus designed has been sitting at a table by the rainy window for a little while already, if the half-empty jug of milk and the half-full plate of pastries, both set between he and his newspaper, are any indication. He looks about thirty, thirty-five maybe; his dark hair is streaked with soft silver at the temples. He is not familiar at all.

Not at all.

He does not look up until Ruby steals a pastry from his plate. _"Ruby, ma chère." _(Instantly he is on his feet, seizing her hand with disconcertingly swift gentleness and pressing his lips to her fingers. _"Il y a une éternité que je ne vous aie vue."_

"_Bien sûr. Je souhaite vous presenter quelqu'un," _is the amused answer, and Ruby revels Aoko like a dancer. "Paul, this is Nakamori Aoko. Aoko-san, Monsieur Paul Sernine."

-

_(A story is about—_

_A story is about life. A story is about placing characters in a situation that seems inextricable, a situation that neither of them think they can manage to get out of—and making them do so without even letting them know how.)_

_­_-

_**Ruby, ma chère. Il y a une éternité que je ne vous aie vue—**_**Ruby, my dear. I haven't seen you in an eternity.**

_**Bien sûr. Je souhaite vous presenter quelqu'un—**_**Of course. I wish to introduce someone to you.**

**As for the poem, don't ask what it means—it'll come out next chapter. But I'm curious—does it ring a bell to anyone?**


	4. hour

'**Tis no secret who Sernine is, thankyou. You made that clear enough xD reviewers are very much adored. Cookiessssss.**

**Disclaimer—I don't own Kaito, Aoko, Ruby Jones, Paul Verlaine's poems, or the Paul Sernine and Tout-Va-Bien names. All clear? good. Now read on.**

**-**

**hourglass**

**-**

Prompt:—

_I would save everyday like a treasure and then I would spend them with you_

_-_

_(a story is—)_

-

Tout-Va-Bien is a black and white shepherd dog, hairy and tall and licking Aoko's fingers with unsuspecting friendliness. He moves around the expensive restaurant with more ease and grace than she ever could.

"What does it mean, _Tout-Va-Bi-en?"_ Aoko asks, her accent stumbling across the two vowels, allowing the dog to nuzzle her knuckles some more.

"'All is well'," replies Sernine, in a smooth voice that is only impeded by the thick underlying French. "I found the name in a book." _(A smile here, swift and secret and it sounds a little familiar, Tout. Va. Bien, Wonderful Tout-Va-Bien—and she wonders if she hasn't read the book.)_

"He likes you, Aoko-san," Ruby laughs in her laugh, and leaves it hanging about—without further specification.

"Perhaps," Aoko admits, and smiles, and rubs Tout-Va-Bien behind the ears. Outside the tall windowpane, shifting on the very corner of her vision, the bulky silhouette of the Madeleine outlines itself across the ever-tumbling evening.

"Verlaine, you said?" Sernine demands, however, extending one manicured hand for the envelope.

(He carries it across with the greatest reverence.)

"H'mm, _oui,_" he ponders, later, pouring over the short lines. "Paul Verlaine. French poet, turn of the 20th century. These are the first four verses of his poem _Les Soleils Couchants—_The Setting Suns. If I recall well, it is part of his _Romances sans Paroles—_Romances Without Words, it means."

Ruby smiles winningly. Sernine mock-bows, and Tout-Va-Bien nibbles on Aoko's fingers.

The other patrons, who likewise dine at the restaurant, cast intrigued smiles onto the table of those three musketeers, whose three amount down to four. A few offer Sernine a nod, which is gracefully returned. (The jewels shine and glow—_facetsfacets—_under the tempered lights.)

"A poor, spur-of-the-moment translation would go thus: _'A weakened dawn/Pours among the fields/The melancholy/Of Setting Suns.' _Very belonging to the symbolist movement. The marked plural of the setting suns—your friend has good tastes, _mademoiselle."_

"So I notice," Aoko smiles.

"Dare I hope my help is of any consequence?"

Here a pondering is necessary. The Setting Suns. Paul Verlaine. _Une aube affaiblie…_ a weakened dawn. Kaito may like riddles, but riddles in _French_—well, it might be going just a little too far. As it is, however, those four verses have done nothing more than bring her in Paris; as for further hints—they might come in later.

"Of course," she says, therefore, slowly, "but I may fell the need to claim it again. If Kaito is, as I suspect, in Paris, he will most probably not stop at just this. He'll most likely lead me all over the place in a wild goose chase," she adds, sourly.

"Most likely indeed. I would advice, _ma chère_, looking up data on _Les Soleils Couchants _and Paul Verlaine before you undertake any course of action. It might give you some basis to start on—more at least than my poor memory exercises can afford in a restaurant."

—and just like that, for the first time in the evening, Aoko is conscious of where she is. This is not the most luxurious restaurant in Paris, but it certainly is expensive and fashionable—not the kind of place a local Japanese police officer, with such tastes as hers, would frequent, at any rate—and—

(_she looks and sees jewels and gems and their glistening slide, as though light on water, and she realizes that_)

—she is dressed in a black skirt and blouse.

She apologizes for this, immediately, and they laugh and don't come quite as far as patting her shoulder, but near to.

"Besides," Sernine adds, and the wisp of laughter that furls and unfurls in his voice makes him sound almost as young as she, "if you are to feel awkward every time we meet in such a place—for I assume you will again ask my help in the near future?—I might as well provide you with fitting clothes right and spare you the embarrassment. I do not care much myself, really," he adds, dramatically, rubbing above Tout-Va-Bien's collar.

Aoko blushes all the faster that the calm lamps highlight her blood-rushed cheeks.

-

_(a story is words._

_words and words and then you start thinking someone is someone else.)_

_-_

**That might have cleared things at bit. If not, just wait for more—I'm dropping hints at lightspeed here. :3 Ta!**


	5. tick

**Apparently, the reaction to last chapter essentially concerned Sernine's want to buy Aoko clothes. I assume you'll like this one as well, dears. Much amor. Also, I'm assuming that at the fine age of twenty-three, Aoko and Hakuba have been friends long enough to call each other by their first names.**

**Disclaimer—Hakuba Saguru and Nakamori Aoko (and, by extension, Kuroba Kaito) are the very own property of Aoyama Gosho-sama. Now if only he'd remind us of that oftener.**

**-**

**tick**

**-**

Prompt:—

_particle by particle she slowly changes_

_-_

_(a story—)_

_­-_

"_Paul Sernine?'_ goes Saguru's deformed voice over the air-wires that separate Tokyo from Paris. In the background Aoko can hear clanks and hisses, loud voices laughing—he is probably at the police station. "_It does sound familiar."_

"It does, doesn't it?"

Aoko has woken late. The luminous, untainted light of early afternoon hours floods the hotel bedroom in through the large window and the narrow balcony; outside, down in the Grands Boulevards, cars are racing, barely heeding the red lights. Those French drivers are either very able or very suicidal. Or both.

_(And all of the light—)_

"Any clue of where it might come from?"

"_I don't know—"_Saguru sounds genuinely disturbed, and the clanks and hisses get slightly louder, as though he has taken the phone away from his ear to think clearly, and then soften again. "_It sounds like the name of someone of I know, but I can't figure out who."_

"Hm-mm," agrees Aoko, noncommittally, moving towards the door where she has just heard a soft knock.

"_Or maybe I've just read his name somewhere in the paper," _Saguru says. Aoko opens the door.

Outside stands a _soubrette_ in a blue dress, arms full with an enormous bouquet of thorn-apples and apple-blossoms; and a large, flat package. She curtseys, despite the load. "_Des fleurs pour vous, mademoiselle,"_ she babbles in busy, high-pitched French, _"de la part de Monsieur Sernine."_

_Flowers,_ thinks Aoko. "Thank you," she does say, _"merci_," takes the flowers and present, leaves the girl a five-euros tip and closes the door.

"_Aoko?"_

"Sorry," she says, absently, "didn't catch that." She drops on the couch and lays the presents on the coffee table. Those apple blossoms are gorgeous. Attached to a ribbon, a card, _I am fulfilling last night's promise._ She smiles.

"_I said, is he a famous man?"_

Saguru's familiar, British-tainted Japanese rouses her. "I don't know," she admits. "Everyone whom I've met seems to know about him. He just sent me flowers," she says, on an afterthought. "And—" she lifts the package's lid; underneath is a flash of blue material. "—clothes."

She can _hear_ Saguru blink. _"Clothes?"_

"He told me I needed clothes that would be worthy of me,' she says, frowning at the memory. "So he sent me some."

Saguru blinks some more, and then prattles off in a lengthy warning against French _seducteurs_ charming pretty, helpless young ladies strayed in Paris, easily trusted and with dark designs… Aoko laughs and waves him off. "I'm a grown girl. I can take care of myself, Saguru. Besides, Jones-san introduced him to me, and I trust her. Just give me a call if you find out why his name sounds so familiar, will you?"

Saguru promises, though grudgingly, and rings off with the addition that he will be seeing her father in the course of the day, and will be thus able to give him news of hers. In exchange he demands a promise to take care of herself. Aoko laughs, and likewise promises.

There are, in fact (she discovers, returning the phone in its cradle and turning back to the package) several layers, each separated by silk paper, thin and soft as fabric itself, and in each Aoko finds another garment. Cream blouse. White skirt. Black, short jacket.

(The prices have been discreetly removed, but she knows enough to recognize the material's quality, the fine lines—)

The fourth and last layer contains a blue dress, sliced at the shoulder, lined in dark, delicately cut— _and she sees herself the way he must, standing before the mirror with her hair down._

All of them fit her perfectly.

-

_(a story links through thousands of sea-miles and ticking seconds._

_hear it pass.)_

_-_

**Hmm. Remember that talk we had about flower symbolisms, Halfling Rogue?**


	6. breadth

**Plot-y plot-y plot. Kaito is one sneaky guy, I tell you. This might still be confusing, but please bear with me. It'll all come out clearer (I hope—) in the end.**

**Disclaimer—*points at name of the website* keyword is 'fan'.**

**-**

**breadth**

**-**

Prompt:—

_for you I'd burn the length and breadth of sky_

_-_

_(a story is—)_

_-_

The English library Sernine indicated to her is named after a playwright and looks onto the Seine quays. _('You will find everything you need there—in a language you can hopefully understand fully.')_ It is, in fact, a bookstore, but so arranged with low couches and velvets curtains and a teashop on the first floor as to make comfortable arrangements for anyone wanting simply to sit down and read for a few hours of the afternoon.

It is not crowded, although people certainly do come and go, and Aoko spends a few minutes in the doorway, watching this mother soothing down her crying child, this businessman taking serious notes, these high school students giggling over the latest romantic novels.

_(She is reminded of Keiko and herself and Saguru's pink hair and Kaito—)_

"_Bonjour_!" exclaims a young man cheerfully, coming toward her with a folder and a green apron. _"Puis-je vous venir en aide?"_

"Ah—er, _bonjour," _Aoko stumbles. He looks no older than nineteen­—some college kid working part-time to pay for his studies, or lodgings, surely. His chestnut hair sticks out at odd angles. "I, uh… I'm looking for a book about Paul Verlaine; I was told I could find one here."

"The French poet?" the boy-man says, skipping into forced, albeit rather easy English. "Of course—sit down, please, _mademoiselle, _I'll bring it to you."

He is back in a few minutes, bringing a red-binding book and a coffee­—"Just in case," he adds, with a charming smile that must have had its fair share of swooning ladies, "so that you don't have to get up again. _Bonne lecture!_"

He skips off with a wink that Aoko replies to, awkwardly, with a slight wave. She is only four years or so older, after all, and she likes a nice sight. Obvious as he is, it is agreeable, after being for so long the celibate-girl of her promotion.

'_Paul Verlaine,_' says the book, _'was born in 1844, March 30__th__, in Metz. He was educated in the Lycée Bonaparte, now better known as Lycée Condorcet, in downtown Paris. Composing poems from an early age, he frequented different literary salons in the capital and became friends with such people as Anatole France, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, François Copée, José-Maria de Heredia, Leconote de Lisle… and published his first collection of poems, the Poèmes Saturniens, in 1866._

'_He married Mathilde Mauté in 1870, but became heavily compromised during the deadly Commune de Paris the following year and fled the repression into the Pas-de-Calais. Coming back to Paris later in the year, he met young poet Arthur Rimbaud in 1972 and eloped with him to London._

'_Their short and passionate affair turned to tragic when Verlaine shot at Rimbaud in 1873, and despite not having killed him, was imprisoned. The poems he had composed between 1871 and 1873 were then published under the title of the 'Romances Sans Paroles'. It was during his stay in prison that he underwent a religious conversion. The end of his life was miserable, as he became addicted to both drugs and alcohol, and he died on the 8__th__ of January, 1896, at the age of 51._

'_His poetry was first influenced by the Parnassian movement, but later became part of the Symbolist movement, along with such writers as Mallarmé, Rimbaud and Valéry. According to Verlaine, poetry was all about suggesting rather than affirming, more thanks to nuances and sounds than to words, and paying the greatest attention to the musicality of words—this was most particularly expressed in his poem 'Art poétique', whose first line goes thusly: 'De la musique avant toute chose'—which could be translated as, 'music first and foremost'.'_

Very nice, thinks Aoko, leaning back in her chair and taking a thoughtful sip of coffee. But not very helpful. Or it may turn out to be, later on, perhaps­—when and if Kaito will deign dropping her a few more hints as to whatever he wantss her to find. In the meantime, looking up more about Verlaine's poems and the symbolist movement may be the next, logical course of action.

She returns fifteen minutes later with two more books that do not dig up much. She flips through them, not to much avail.

Her coffee, or at least the few last remnants of it, is cold by now, and she eventually stands, limbs stiff and surprised to see it is much later than she expected, to march towards the counter. The first book is not very expensive, and she may as well buy it for now. It might turn out to be helpful in the near- or far-future.

As she picks it up, however, a sheet of paper slithers out of between two pages and flutters down to the polished table.

Kaito's hand smiles at her and writes, in convoluted black-inked words,

'_Elle est retrouvée. _

_Quoi? —L'Éternité._

_C'est la mer allée_

_Avec le soleil.'_

—Aoko stares.

(The waiter-helper directs her to Arthur Rimbaud's completed works as soon he lays eyes on the paper.)

-

_(a story is pages and pages and the feral touch of leather._

_turn it between your hands. gently.)_

_-_

_**Puis-je vous venir en aide—**_**May I help you?**

_**Bonne lecture—**_**enjoy your read.**

**Paul Verlaine is a very famous French poet. His works are still taught in class, be it primary school or college level—where I am. So is Arthur Rimbaud, who was nicknamed 'the man with sand feet' and was one of these early prodigies—he died unfortunately young. I just hope it isn't too confusing—and yes, there's a reason why Kaito chose Paris and French literature, thank you. :3 (Found him in this chapter? *shot*)**


	7. ellipse

**Foxglove-chan, this chapter is all for you. I hope you'll find inspiration in it—you sure can make your reviews shine and glow and be all beautiful and pretty and arg. *dies from the shininess of it all***

**Disclaimer—I don't own much. Words and words. Everything else is Aoyama's.**

**-**

**ellipse**

**-**

Prompt:—

_All the kingdoms in the world and the glory of them._

_-_

_(a story is like—)_

_-_

She comes back by the Seine quays. It is late already, and the sun, slowly but patiently, steadily; inches toward setting on the river. Aoko hardly notices; her mind is all to Verlaine, and Rimbaud, and how did the paper get into that book and anybody could have slipped it in while she was looking for other books, but Kaito—and the one riddle the two riddles combined form.

Confusion. Kaito is being obnoxious, and, what is worse, he is being invisibly obnoxious. Had he acted thus in front of her, she would already have grabbed her mop and—

_—he ducked and laughed even as she gave chase, under their classmates' appreciate whistles and claps—_

—blink. Slowly she stares at the flowing river, the river that passes in half-hues. It is already a year and a half since she hasn't seen Kaito.

Suddenly the place seems too big and too wide. The quay around her enlarges and swells, throbbing in oranges and reds and golds, pulsing on the edges of her vision; and the Seine is too close, too fast, and seems to pitch in towards her, blind and luring, and breathlessly she steps back and almost into a fisherman's basket.

The sensation vanishes—already she has jumped back and around, flustered and alarmed, words of hasty apology leaving her lips in instinctive Japanese.

The man tips back his wide hat, and smiles, and says, "It's quite all right, no harm done."

The voice is fluent, grave Japanese, and that stuns her into stillness. The face is also, an olden face already riddled with wrinkles, black eyes looking onto hers with calm amiability. "Oh," says Aoko, and blinks down.

The man laughs. "I have not wanted to disturb you and your reflections, young lady, and as a result you nearly squished the one fish I have caught today."

Another flustered apology, that is also dismissed. The fisherman considers her for a few moments the young woman that stands before him, the wild hair in the riverwind, the blue eyes, the flurry, nervous hands. "You look very much as though you might want to sit down for a while," he murmurs, quietly.

(It takes—

_­—coaxing words and gentle smiles: calm, patient determination—_

—very little to persuade her.)

Neither of them ask the other who they are or why they are in Paris; what they are is what they are now:

Two not-strangers in a town that is not theirs, sitting on the edge of the red-gold evening, on the edge of the _quais de la Seine,_ legs dangling almost to graze the water and a fishing rod between them. There is no silence around them—the roar of cars up and behind them, the roar of boats coming up- or down-stream, the roar of the river.

Aoko speaks little. _(Enough.) _She keeps quiet about the riddles, and even as she mentions Kaito does not speak his name; but words seem to appease her. They click into place softly, organizing through the haze of confusion.

And then quiet. minutes pass and the fishing pole trembles under the force of the stream.

"My dear girl," the fisherman says, "it appears to me that you are in a muddle."

(It sounds like a line out of a book, and it is. _It is.)_

"Sometimes," the fisherman says, "it is good to just sit and stay and watch. And think. The only thing you want might be this: quiet and thought."

The sun is setting now, far to their right, above and underneath the arches of bridges, casting a bright gold on the side of respectable buildings that side on the river; the other side is shadows. There is light over the river, and it taints it with the glorious shades of the setting suns: and those hues mingle and flow quietly, half-reflecting at times the bluer, darker shadows of trees and walls.

_—the evenings fell in gorgeous reds and golds, and the world contained that breathless quality again—_

"Look at that barge," the fisherman says, pointing at a _péniche_ that is anchored not far from the closest bridge. "It has been there these last two weeks. Sometimes I meet the owner—he comes in and then away. But he never takes the _péniche_ away."

—_never go away, never go away, never go away—_

"He leaves it here, to fit in the painting. It's an old boat, so far as I can judge—nothing of them young mechanical things these days. One would say, perhaps, that it is a museum piece that is not fit for navigation—"

_—"I won't," Kaito breathed-laughed, and he pressed a sunshine smile onto the skin of her bared shoulder—_

"But it never is so belonging to here as when dusk falls like this."

­_—"I," he said, and—_

—_the next morning—_

"I," Aoko chokes on the word, and it comes out strangled and almost like a sob.

-

_(a story is colours and hues on a soft canvas, playing nuances.)_

_-_

**God, there are so many hints in there it's not even funny. *shakes head* next chapter will come with some of the smex you asked for, fyliwion-samaaaaa.**

**Anyone who can tell me what was that book the fisherman quoted from wins a cookie. *shot***


	8. clockwise

**Might clear things up a bit. Then again, might not. We'll see. Also, this is not graphic enough to deserve an M-rating, but, um, it's clear enough what's happening, yes, thank you. So help me, Kirby-chan, just _one_ word from you—**

**Disclaimer—Oh how I'd love to see Gosho-sensei draw this, yes I would. *cackles***

-

**clockwise**

**-**

Prompt:—

_the past is another land—_

_-_

_(in the present—)_

_-_

_(—ghosts._

_Fingers trail down her skin—shoulders, arms, hips, legs—smooth and fine like red, red wine, dripping, trickling, coating every dip and curve of bone and flesh—)_

Their first time together was nothing short of ordinary. It was messy, inexperienced on both sides, and more than likely they had drunk enough to lose whatever inhibitions held them back during their high school years. It was not fantastic; it was not terrible either. It was just right.

_(—the mouth that presses hot against hers, and the flicker of wet tongue—)_

They began with touches, shy and knowing; more than once the embarrassment made them cringe, made them hold back, made them question what they were doing and almost shrink away. But always, when one hesitated, the other brought them right back in.

It turned out to be as much of a dance as their mop chases _(chasing and being chased and. being found)_ which now were sparse and few and far between, or as their constant bickering, teasing on the side, reacting on the other.

And in the end, it was childishly simple, and they were left breathless and spent on the comforter, vaguely wondering why it had needed them so much effort.

_(—reciprocation._

_Her hands dig in the dip of his hips, down to the small of his back, and. He shudders—)_

There was no morning-after. Both of them dozed off after the act, but Kaito woke first, in the early predawn greys that filled Aoko's bedroom with ghosts. At awakening, she found the sheets sickeningly cold and a note (origami-folded to resemble a cat, ears perked) on the bedside table.

He called her, of course (she would have if he hadn't), but their following meetings were tainted by embarrassment and a total ignorance, on one side as on the other, of how things were supposed to run now.

_(—he speaks her name in a burst of raspy laughter, and so close to her ear, to her neck, that she shivers—)_

The night he told her he was KID met with a renewal of what friendship they had, although Kaito was then convinced she would hate him for it, and came bracing himself for the worst. He said so. She slapped him.

And then she hugged him.

They slept together that night, just slept, exactly like they used to during their childhood sleepovers, snuggled under the blankets, boy and girl friends without any indication to innuendo between them. Kaito was shivering, violently at times, and had taken a grip on Aoko's forearms that wouldn't let go, and only, reassured, drifted off to sleep, when she allowed him to embrace her completely, almost lying on top of her, fingers raking slowly through his hair.

_­(—and he laughs, breathily, and he shifts, and she _gasps_—)_

They fell apart again after that, though smoothly, not as abruptly as the first time, easily, the way friends who no longer have much time to consecrate to each other do. Their meetings were rare, and always a little awkward, but held the easy manner of fond remembrance.

As it was, within the three years that ensued for them to reach this point, Kaito has not once failed to send her a box of chocolates, with only a rose for signature, on the anniversary day of that when he finally, finally told her the truth.

_(—and Kaito presses open-mouthed, white-hot kisses over her collarbone, clearly concerned, but she shakes her head and wraps cool arms around his neck, pulling him down—)_

Of that first time, Aoko's memories also faded in time. Other moments, other people replaced it. She remembered scarcely more than Kaito's laughter in her ear as they clumsily undressed, or the way his mouth pressed on her hair while she dozed off against his shoulder.

And yet, as she sits on the Seine quays under the still-clear, darkening sky, all memories of that very first night, terrifying and awkward, and afterwards so confusingly simple, all return to her in a flood that nearly drown out the river before her.

_(—and then it is heat and friction and _light_, KaitoKaitoKaito—)_

Innocent have been the words of that old fisherman; amusing also at times. They haven't had anything even remotely connected to Kaito. But it was him in spirit, visible and clear in glassy filigree, when one knew where to look. And in the mental turmoil which this last case was throwing her onto, after the riddles and the intern confusion that is Paris tonight, Aoko knows exactly where to look.

And the memories return full-force, invading the quay and the river and the molten-gold cobbles, ghosting over the fishing rod; the deep feel of the mattress plowing underneath her back, the coolness of the pillowcase against her heated cheek, Kaito kissing locks of hair from her face, with small nudges of his nose; Kaito's shoulders, Kaito's arms, Kaito's heat even as their skin burned together.

_(—and then Kaito is panting in her ear and she hardly notices anything but his skin and hers, almost painfully sensitized, and she breathes back to life in the crook of his shoulder—)_

They fill the quay, grey and blue in the dying light, and a chill runs up her arms. They fill the quay, and with it the river, the unfamiliar ribbon of silvery reflects that winds and winds between olden buildings, rippling under smooth wisps of wind, and—

By this time she is definitely cold. The lamplights flick on, blinking, over their heads, and Aoko excuses herself and stands up. In the harsh, golden lights, the ghosts fade dully.

_(—and then his hands rubbing up and down her sides—and peace.)_

By the time she returns to her hotel, it is night.

-

_(a story exists in past and leads it down to present, slowly, without false gestures._

_a story traces time.)_

-

**I guess one day, I will get the guts to not only write smut, but also post it. *shrugs* and yes, I did write first time, and yes, that does mean there's more to come, shut up.**

**On a side (though not completely unrelated) note:**

**JUN-CHAN. BUTTERFLY-CHAN. MY SANITY. I NEED IT **_**BACK.**_

***trots off to sleep***


	9. osmose

**Bad news, gents. My laptop has received a belated christening of an unearthly amount of soy sauce. Which means that not only its screen is not completely unresponsive, but I've lots all the data on it. (This is me talking from the family computer.) I have no idea as to the course of action to follow now, but whatever I end up doing, it'll mean that my computer-time will be drastically shortened until further notice. (Gah, sophisticated words here. It's the panic.)**

**Hopefully I'll be able to read and post fic, albeit not as frequently as before (and this had to happen during synaesthesia too!), and my mail's still open. But messenger and RP­—well, we'll have to see. Sorry, guys ;o;**

**And now that I'm done complaining, on with the show.**

**Disclaimer—I don't own MK. I own a laptop. Laptops should be water-proof. Or soy sauce-proof. At least.**

**-**

**osmose**

**-**

Prompt:—

—_the palace itself grew dim, swayed above her, fell onto her softly, slowly, noiselessly, and the sky fell with it._

_-_

_(a story can­—}_

-

The Luxembourg, a park of long grass and ancient statues in downtown Paris, flurry centre of the sinning light-world, on a September afternoon, soft sunshine onto olden, stilled stone; children run, couples stroll; some return, others vanish. There are shouts from where the swings string out discordant sounds.

And Aoko lies back and looks at the sky.

This is a beautiful place, surely, and even the coating of childish cries and prattling French words echoing can dim out dully and leave the park beneath, the park and its acres of trees and adjoining terraces and Greek statues and chess players.

Here the wind seems to play in branches, sweeping leaves with a fluting sounds that seems to come straight from the Pan statue, grinning maniacally in an alley; there the clouds reflect in the mirror of the large, round, centre basin around which gather green metallic chairs; above all the sky is silver-blue, brighter where the autumn sun shines out the shapes and shades.

This must be what the Suspended Garden looked like once upon a time, Aoko thinks, terraces after terraces of white stone, linked together by marble staircases and platforms, each cradling within their nest the mocking statues of pagan, dead gods who seem to still and mock the raging, modern world that has long forgotten them—

_(—and the long-said words say, 'That, too, will pass.')_

But when closing her eyes onto the nervy, handsome day, she can almost feel the garden throb and pulse about her, layers of ghost veils rising and falling to the slow _ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump—_

—_ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba— _of a gigantic heart.

And then a dog barks, and the charm isn't broken, but still and shifts and changes.

And then the world is all black-and-white hair, and a warm body pressing against hers that is musky and bony, and a rough tongue lapping at her hand and her face.

"_Tout-Va-Bien! ici, mon vieux­—_oh, hello, _mademoiselle _Nakamouri." The voice skips to smooth English nearly flawlessly, and blond hair and dark eyes enter her field of vision. "Enjoying the beauties of our local _parc,_ are you?"

Aoko sits up. Smiles. "That I am. How are you, Sernine-san?"

(He drops gracefully to the grass next to her, and that surprises her a little: though he no longer wears the formal suit he had donned on their former meeting, and more casual clothes today, he is not exactly the kind to fall to short intimacy. But his manners are charming, and Tout-Va-Bien is snuggling up against her side, and Aoko falls short of further surprise.)

"I see you received the clothes," he adds, with an appraising smile.

Aoko flushes; a little. And, to conceal this, she says, "This is a beautiful place."

"Indeed it is," suddenly he is enthusiastic. "It is a fine garden. Abit crowded come _les beaux jours_, but it still conceals some of the finery of the ancient days—_Oh les beaux jours que ce siècle de fer—_and so on. And today it seems that even those old gods are laughing at us."

He expresses in words what confused her in thought, and she falls silent again. She lets him babble,

"—and if you only follow this trail of those shallow, ever-moving deities, you will find a long, blue-green, leafed fountain that looks almost like every other long, blue-green, leafed fountain, but if you skirt past it and into the small grove of trees that backs it, and listen closely, you will be able to hear a slow, slow beating that is the garden's beating heart—_mon Dieu_, you _would_ let me babble on."

Aoko laughs, and says, "Not at all. I quite enjoy the story."

"What story? it is the truth. But I am being silly. Have you found a solution to that riddle of yours?"

The question feels innocent enough. Aoko produces the book, and the Verlaine data, and the second riddle. "The bookseller tells me it was written by Arthur Rimbaud. Was it, really?"

A rapid musing ensues. "Certainly. I think it is part of his collection of poems entitled _Le Bateau Ivre—_The Drunken Boat. I think I would translate it so—though mind you, it is nowhere near the original beauty of the words, but it will be accurate—I hope—

"'_It was found again._

_What was? —Eternity._

_It is the sea, allied_

_With the sun.'"_

_­-_

_(a story can mislead you._

_from the second you start thinking, you're lost.)_

_-_

**Sernine's story, if anyone wonders, is actually true. There really is a long, blue-green, leafed fountain in some secluded spot of the Luxembourg park, with a little grove at the back of it, and if you step into that little grove and listen, you can hear a slow, steady pounding. Legend has it it's the garden's beating heart.**

**There's probably a scientific explanation, what with the fountain's mechanism and whatnot, but you can't hear it around any of the **_**other**_** fountains—and anyway in such a case I prefer the legend.**

**See you when I see you. Hopefully it'll turn out for the best. *needs comfort***


	10. mundane

**Sorry for the delay, gents. I had to master this computer's writing and updating programs—which turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Anyhow, updating basis is now back to one chapter every two days or so. *apologizes humbly***

**Chappie dedicated, with my loving thanks, to foxglove-chan and MissGreenPeace. Comfort is comfort indeed. Much, much love, you two. *hugs***

**Disclaimer—Ahaha. No.**

**-**

**mundane**

**-**

Prompt:—

_Fifty-years before I could see`_

_Rouen cathedral is built_

_Of parallel shafts of sun_

_-_

_(a story—)_

_-_

Aoko sits cross-legged on the grass, says, "All that's very well, but," and scratches Tout-Va-Bien behind the ears.

"All that's very well," she says, "but I don't understand what Kaito wants. His riddles make no sense. I don't even know what they are supposed to indicate—a location, a time, a concept? The possibilities are endless."

Tout-Va-Bien is nonchalantly stretched out between them _('Tu as vu ce chien? Il est magnifique!' 'Ils forment un joli couple…' 'Tu m'achètes un chien comme ça, papa?' 'Cet homme est un peu familier.') _and Sernine, looking thoughtful, plays absently with his pet's front paws.

"Perhaps," he suggests, mildly, "it would be necessary for you to drop the, ah, how do you say? Detective act, and take on the problem with a more—scholarly mind."

Aoko frowns at this.

"_Je veux dire,"_ he elaborates, "stop looking for clues everywhere and _analyse_ your 'riddles' without prejudice, so as to pinpoint the resemblances between them, and—draw your own conclusions from here. At least," he adds, laughing good-heartedly, "that's what any good Lit. teacher would tell you."

—it is difficult to concentrate in the flurry garden. Children are yelling, people laughing, dogs barking—to his credit, Tout-Va-Bien is holding himself extra-nice. Aoko burrows her fingers in his hairs while studying the two riddles—wait. Poems.

Of course, there's the 'sun' parallel. Here, however, is a distinction: while Rimbaud's poem simply allies sun and sea without any temporal indications, the Verlaine one gives two, which echo and oppose one another: dawn, and sunset. In both cases, the poems refer to that particular moment in the day when sun meets either earth or sea. She tells this to Sernine, who nods approvingly.

He fiddles with Tout-Va-Bien's collar. "Have you ever," he asks then, more gravely, "been acquainted with the concept of the French impressionist movement?"

Aoko blinks. "Er—vaguely. Isn't it a painting movement dating back to the early 20th century?"

"Exactly. The impressionists painters believed that more than the precise shapes and colours of a figurative painting, what mattered was the impression rendered by these shapes and colours. From that resulted a technique executed with minute spots of paint put very close together so as to give the _impression_ of shape and colour.

"At the same time, this movement was echoed in literature in the symbolist movement."

Aoko looks up. "I remember," she says slowly. "The book said Verlaine and Rimbaud were part of it."

"They were," agrees Sernine, nodding at her words. "It was Verlaine who said, in one of his poems, 'for we want the nuance only; not the colour, only the nuance'. They believed that it was in the fusion, the alliance between two elements that usually do not mingle, and in the _vision_ of that alliance, that one could find the very essence of these elements. Hence Rimbaud's verses,

"_It was found again._

_What was? —Eternity._

_It is the sea, allied,_

_With the sun."_

"Hence also some of the impressionists' paintings, such as Monet's _Impression, Soleil Levant_—Impression, Rising Sun, impression being, of course, the keyword. It represents an early morning in the French port Le Havre, where the sky and the sea are the same hue of soft, silver-tinged blue-green, and the sun is a red-orange blur. It is a very beautiful painting—one that light reflects and becomes."

He pauses. "Does that help?"

"Even if it didn't, it's an interesting exposé," Aoko smiles. "But I think it opens possibilities." She ponders a little while, over the two poems, thoughtfully. "I wonder," she murmurs. "From these verses I'd more or less deduced that they indicated a period of time—either dawn or sunset from the first, and the second confirmed sunset… but your little explanation may have confused that." She frowns.

"Maybe," Sernine suggest, stroking Tout-Va-Bien behind the ears, only inches from her own stilled fingers, "maybe they aim to mean different things, which combined together form the full signification. That's what they say about works of art, after all," opening his hands so as to suggest greater design than our eyes can see, "that they hold different meanings and different interpretations within."

"Hmm," Aoko mumbles, noncommittally. Saguru may know something about that—

"In any case," says he, more cheerfully, "you can't look so glum in the Luxembourd—or anywhere in Paris, for that matter… what would your little boyfriend say if he saw you so? Come, you must do something."

She smiles. "And what do you suggest?"

Laughter lines wrinkle at the corners of his eyes. "Are you doing anything tomorrow night?"

-

_(a story is about nuances moulding together to create light.)_

_-_

**Hmm. Sernine's getting bolder. Poor, poor Aoko—with all the clues he gave her in this chapter, she'll be even more confused soon enough *cackles off***


	11. eclipse

**Hmm, I know, late again. I got my class reports yesterday, and learnt that not only I got all my year credit and passed into the next, but I got exactly the classes I asked for. (Read: 8-hour English lessons per week, oh yes.) Hence, party. Hence, updating is only today. Um.**

**Chappie dedicated to butterfly-chan, because I feel you'll like it, and I haven't been able to catch you online in forever. ;o; Come baaaaaaaack.**

**Disclaimer—ownies? Me? I'll take 'em first.**

**-**

**eclipse**

**-**

Prompt:—

_Pray silence for the soloist. But let him be soon over, that we may hear the great striding fugue again._

_-_

_(a story is like—)_

-

"Stop worrying," says Sernine's soothing voice in her ear and Sernine's insistent fingers on her hand. "You look perfect for such an outing."

Aoko nearly trips on the red, velvet carpet. "I doubt it," she hisses. "I am not used to high heels—"

The fingers tighten. "Then hold onto me. The dress masks your inexperience. I seem to have chosen well," says he, sounding pleased. "The dark blue suits you as I though. And you did your hair very well. You look very pretty;" he says, and smiles, and looks so genuinely happy that she gives up snapping at him for exaggerate flattery. "Shall we go in, then, _mademoiselle?"_

Aoko takes in a breath and nods, and they move past the hall of the Opera de Paris.

Here is a dream come true _(once upon a time, she used to say; remember? A blue-boy used to smile and joke and flip a skirt that was too short and not luxurious, not luxurious at all—he swore he'd offer her a rich one one day)_: the gold-trimmed marble building at the very end of the largest avenue, flooded with magnificent light under the drooping evening sky. The little girl and the little child who was in love with fairytales and endings that were never, never unhappy stares and gapes, well-hidden within the blue uniform of the strict police officer.

(Uniforms do define, she thinks, treading the splendid carpet, and—)

—and they follow the _ouvreuse _down to their seats, past rows and rows of glorious reds in the Italian-built hall. These are gorgeous seats they have, looking perfectly onto the stage and, lower down, past the golden balustrade, onto the orchestra—

_(the stage and the world, the red-wave folds of the curtain and the red-velvet of the hundred seats, the actors that are real and those who are not yet on to play, and who are to say one is not the other, and the other not the one?)_

—what a glorious lush light the lustre's and lamps do deliver tonight.

"_Le programme, Monsieur, Mademoiselle,"_ says the _ouvreuse_, who having fulfilled her mission departs with her stilettos and a handsome tip to meet more of the satined suits and handsome dresses who crowd around the loges.

"We are just in time, as you see,' says Sernine, who, as the courtesy apparently implies, waits until she is seated comfortably down to settle himself. The curious grey eyes brush across her face, nervous and pale under the lights. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," she answers automatically. (She does not say: _This might be a dream come true._

She has a feeling he knows anyway.)

For the time she glances down at the _livret _between her hands. _Carmen, _it says, the _Carmen_ of Merimée and Halévy, the gorgeous queen-opera, and already the lights dim out, and the curtain rises, and the stage and the world are one.

It is a one strange thing to attend a play, or an opera, or a movie, in a language you can but barely understand; but Aoko hears what she sees and sees what she hears and all is well. The tunes are well-known, the words, French-intricate and winding round in a web of lush threads, are less.

'_L'Amour est enfant de Bohème,_

_Il n'a jamais, jamais connu de loi;_

_Si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime;_

_Et si je t'aime, prends garde à toi!"_

The words drown in a language that is made of booming baritones and soothing whispers of murmured passions.

It is a glorious spectacle, and it draws Aoko's legs right out from under her when at long last her hands are raw with clapping and the curtain tumbles once more, red and velvet and large-folded. She remains seated while the crowd trickles out; and Sernine remains seated also, without questioning, without moving, until at long last he extends a helpful hand and helps her up.

He does not speak the small trivialities one asks as one leaves such a spectacle, but instead sustains her down the stairs and into the marble-tiled first-floor and past the dark-blue glass doors, onto the outside steps. People await taxis here, huddled in their warm clothes, and she shivers a little.

"We ought to go."

"Of course."

Tout-Va-Bien comes to meet them barking. Sernine does not say where his pet was while they were in, and Aoko does not ask. She thinks it would do just as well to ask the dog. (She recognizes secrets now; threaded well and well-hidden, stifled right underneath the surface of the blueblueblue water—)

"Shall we go back on foot? It is but a short walk."

-

_(a story is a fugue with striding notes that revolve slowly into lower, graver tones._

_A story is like music, or at least it ought to be.)_

-

**Aaaaand Aoko's currently muddled mind should give you a hunch as to how things will turn out in the next chapter. … Not that. No, really.**

**On another note, the French version of _Carmen_ was adapted from Prosper Merimée's short story and adapted into an opera by Meilhac and Halévy. The four verses I put in in this chapter are from Carmen's first and best-known song, and translate thus:**

**'_Love is a Bohemian child,_**

**_It never ever knew any laws;_**

**_If you do not love me, I do;_**

**_And if I love you, then watch out!'_**


	12. stealth

**I hate my computer. Okay? okay. Now that's said, we can go on to wishing Gosho-sama and KID-san a very happy birthday, though belated. I apologise for the lateness of this, again. I'm trying to adapt in a dangerous environment here.**

**Disclaimer—Aoyama Gosho has owned MK for years now.**

**-**

**stealth**

**-**

Prompt:—

'_i am half-sick of shadows,' said_

_the lady of shalott_

_-_

_(a story can be—)_

_-_

The Avenue of the Opera in Paris, an eerie place at night; it opens long and wide, a stretch between the Opera itself and the Comédie-Française, one stage and the other, one world-time and another. Beyond that, there is the Louvre, brilliantly lit in the night sky—reflecting the stars with a thousand glimmers that sway like shadows on the jointed tiles—and beyond that even, the winding ribbon of the Seine in silver and blue, reflecting the sky and Paris and the stars, fire and earth and air.

From the Avenue unwind narrow or larger streets, unfurling together from the strong alley to join the network of intercrossing passages. Lights seem to float in their glassy domes, golden to indicate every intersection.

Aoko and Sernine skip from island to island in the circulation, turning back into the Grands Boulevards (Tout-Va-Bien marches smartly by their sides, sometimes touching their fingers with his nose) and leaving the centuries-witness building and its gorgeous light to die out behind them.

They talking soft, hushed voices, about the spectacle they have just seen, interrupted by the occasional whimper by Tout-Va-Bien, when he demands attention.

The Grands Boulevards are well-lit, but the side streets are dark and shadowy, and if one looks well one might be lured into thinking the shadows there flood down like rain—

—_and the harsh sound of breathing in her ear—_

—Aoko shudders.

"You do look tired, _mademoiselle _Nakamouri," Sernine observes, startling her into focus. "I hope the spectacle was not too much of a fatigue—I know how much you work these days, to try and decipher these riddles—" (and there is, may be, something of regret in the tone).

"No," she says. "No."

He pauses, as though hesitating to continue. Eventually, however, curiosity must win out, for he asks, "How is he,; that young friend of yours? the one who sends you these poems?"

"Kaito?"

_A panting voice, strain on the words, hardly any breath on which to say, "A-Aoko?"_

It is difficult thinking out.

It is difficult answering. Kaito and description do not go well together. She has known him too long, too closely _(fingers are fine-fanned, trailing down) _to be able to, in a few words,; translate into being the very essence of his existence. Eventually, to make peace, she settles back on the years-old mistake:

"Cold. And," and the corners of her eyes wrinkle in a fond smile that does not quite reach her lips, "sweet."

"Oh?" The tone is pleasantly detached. "These two adjectives tend not to go together, do they?"

"Yes," Aoko says. "Yes, they do." (The next alley is filled with the same not-rain quality, but she reaches down to pet Tout-Va-Bien behind the ears.

_Ka-Kaito?)_

"I'd rather not talk of this subject right now, if you don't mind," she articulates, and Sernine takes one look at her and agrees quietly. Tout-Va-Bien whimpers a little when her fingers leave him. _(Pet me pet me—)_ They are silent as they walk on, and the lamplights stretch out enormous shadows on each side of them.

But the side streets are still there, unfurling in long-dark parallels between the tall squared buildings, on each side. And the shadows are still raining in them, a little thin, a little blue, and Aoko—

—_swivelled around and bumped into damp cloth. A hand grabbed hers, and she—_

—blinks. It's getting a little too close, a little too fast, a little too untrue—

—_he was as drenched as she was, and the outfit looked only familiar until she lifted her eyes to meet the silvery glint of round glass._

"_Ka-Kaito?"_

_(And the word crashed together two courses of time she had so far successfully managed to keep separated, and then there he stood, half-KID and half-Kaito, top hat missing and cloak torn and soaked to the bone, staring down at her with eyes that through the rain had never been so blue.)_

_-_

_(A story can be this:_

_long, black lines stroked onto white paper. the thin line between.)_

_-_

**Not much to say. Except this—Ningen Demonai, Eleven Clovers, I promised to send you pics decades ago. Do you still want them, now that I've the time to? (Whoo, hello, summer vacation.)**


	13. wrath

**Delayed again, delayed again. Um. Don't lynch the authoress. She has a neighbour kid to babysit and money to earn if she wants to buy another laptop.**

**Warnings: Content of a sexual nature. Nothing graphic enough to deserve an M-rating, though. I hope. (I hate this rating system. I never know what fits and what doesn't.)**

**-**

**wrath**

**-**

Prompt:—

_Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then _bend

Your force, to break, blow, turn, and make me new.

-

_(a story can—)_

_-_

Their second time wasn't anything like the first. It was rough, half-blind, and thoroughly unexpected—stuck in a back alley the both of them, against a damp wall, and the skies rained, rained, rained above them.

It was not even remotely romantic, ad it was not the adorable clumsiness of their teenage years, either, but rather this: two adults with their full responsibilities, but having lost sight of them absolutely, and drinking on high the speed and franticness of their bodies pressed close together.

Adrenalin, Aoko would think later, but on the spur of the moment no such thing mattered.

What mattered was—Kaito, or what little was left of Kaito in KID despite the torn cloak and the drenched clothes and the absence of top hat; the rain had flattened his hair, and that was enough to make Aoko almost-sob.

This was hardly Kaito, hardly Kaito at all.

She was still breathless from her run after the painting thief her squad had been pursuing for hours in this labyrinth, and so was he; in the background, few and far between in the rain and the nigh and the winding streets, were the shouts of her own squadron and of the KID Task Force. They kissed, at first, hungrily, to the harsh sound of air-whipping choppers.

The alley was obscured, grey with shadows, but Kaito's eyes were so dilated their blue was dark, and squeezed shut with a half-whimper when his mouth broke free from hers? He had her pressed against the closest, coldest wall, and her arms were wrapped tight around his neck and her fingers were digging in his hair and her legs coiled around his waist and oh, everything was going so fast, so so so fast—

Bright white light swept across them and away, and—

_(kaito _she thought _kaitokaitokaito)_

More kisses, hungrier, greedier, even as his hands explored quickly, past the thick cloth of her uniform vest, past the bunch-up material of her uniform skirt, now high on her hips, skimming across heated skin to expose it to the thin, cold rain. Aoko shu-shud-shuddered.

_(ohgodohgodohgod they really were doing this right here right now)_

"Ao—" (Aoko, he wanted to say, AokoAokoAoko; but another kiss smothered that moan, and the next.)

(It mattered little where they were, or when or why—he wanted this, and she wanted it too, so desperately that they were ready to go at it in a wet back alley and not give a shit about being walked in on, despite the, the what and the _who—)_

And there was no rhythm here, besides as fast as they could manage without losing both their balance and their minds. They were kissing again, seeking friction there too, seeking the heat and the pain-pleasure that came with it, seeking enough closeness to own and to share. And it was not beautiful.

(It was not beautiful at all.)

And there was no out-of-body experience, no plunge into heaven, no blissful whiteness or black-out, but there was this: the two of them having mindless, unprepared sex in a narrow, rainy alley without any semblance of rhythm or order, arms wrapped around each other so tight they might think either one would break, amongst the echoing shouts of the police and the sweeping bright of the choppers' lights.

And when it was all over, when they had cooled down somewhat, Kaito applied his heated forehead to the crook of her neck and muttered, lips moving against damp skin, "I should probably get going."

_(—kamouri?)_

She held back a whine, and her arms tightened, relaxed. The shouts and sounds were getting closer, and she knew as well as he, now, that they could not be caught together, both panting and dishevelled so as to leave no doubt as to what had just happened—

_(Nakamouri—)_

"Yes—you're right—" and she stumbled a little, leaning against the concrete wall.

_(—mademoiselle Naka—)_

He—possibly—grinned. (Or something else, her subconscious provided. Or something else.) And pulled away. "Jii-chan will have my hide—"

_(Mademoiselle Nakamouri!)_

—she blinks her eyes open.

Paul Sernine towers above her, huge from close and worried-eyed. Later, Aoko will remember only the littlest details about this scene—how his brunette locks tumbled strangely from his forehead, usually so well-arranged; the way his eyes shone just a little in the dimmed lamplight. For now, she blinks twice, slowly, drowsily.

And he straightens, and she is lying on her hotel room couch, still clad in her opera dress.

"… oh."

He laughs. "Oh indeed. What do you think you're doing, fainting on me in the middle of the street?"

Blink blink, and then he explains, slowly—how she could still walk, sort of, and he only had to sustain her up the stairs and into her room, but, "It looked like you weren't there at all," he adds, worryingly. "You were somewhere else altogether."

(_She was. She—_was.)

It takes her ten minutes to get rid of him, and it is only after promising she will go to bed immediately and sleep until morning without interruptions that she manages to close the door behind him. She is still drowsy—_as though, as though she had just lived her memories all over again—_but a least she stands on her feet.

At least she—oh, a bath sounds heavenly—

—there is a paper on the table, on the prettily-carved, thin-wooded, brown-tinged table…

_Vienne la nuit, sonne l'heure, les jours s'en vont, je demeure_, it reads.

_(Comes the night, strikes the hour, everyday passes—_

—_I remain.)_

_-_

_(a story can hurt. it can hurt and maim and maul; it often does._

_it often does.)_

_-_

**There actually is a full-smut version of this. Not to be posted here, though. If you care to read it, ask away; I'll send it over to you. I know there'll be at least a few interested. (Yeah, yeah, you two… three… whatever. You know who you are.)**


	14. handful

**My neighbour kid is a little demon with an angel's face. Grr. Explains the delay, again. I'm so sorry. We've gone past the middle of this fic, by the way—though according to my first calculations, we should have been over with it already. **

**Disclaimer—I'm only borrowing them. I'll give them back. Honest. *shifty eyes* **

**-**

**handful**

**-**

Prompt:—

'_Hullo! they've put the moon on the wrong side.'_

'_Very careless of the limelight merchant.'_

_-_

_(a story will—)_

_-_

_Guillaume Apollinaire_, the screen reads. _Le Pont Mirabeau. The Mirabeau Bridge._

Aoko scrolls over the poem, which is medium-sized _(strophe, refrain, strophe, refrain, strophe, refrain, strophe—_endless repetition; it illustrates well her present state of mind), and thinks about looking up Guillaume Apollinaire; that thought deflates, however, in the wake of the late hour and her promise to Sernine. She shuts the computer down. On the coffee table, near the vase and its gorgeous flowers, only half-wilted, the little note with the neat two black-lines seems to mock away at her, asking for decipherment.

Her first thought was for Sernine, of course—what better opportunity for him, and what a coincidence that it should be tonight! but the repercussions propel that in an endless, swirling pool of thought, and she is tired.

f course, what with Kaito's bizarre skills, entering her petty hotel room would be child's play—and disguise was always his forte… if he, as she now supposes, keeps a strict eye on her movings, he must have known the room would be empty, _empty_ while she was at the Opera with—

(She refuses to think about that.)

Not for the first time since she has come to Paris she finds herself balancing on the very edge of an ancient rage—_the lurking, maddening fury of secrets untold and the helpless thought—_familiar and stranger in the same second of time. Then it is gone, and she is precariously perched. She comes down, slowly.

It is a little too much for one evening, and she is a tad breathless. The moon outside the window (rippling over the balcony, it is) is the same as in Japan—the same, but that does not make it familiar at all, as it shines over a disfamiliar city. Leaning against the balustrade. The Grands Boulevards; a narrower, straight street that tears away toward the Comédie-Française.

(Three points—­_the Comédie, the Opera, her hotel—_one. two. three. Two are the same. One is—one is her.)

The moon has never been her friend, but now it calls back what was and propels it into what is. Kaito laughing; (but there was something—a glint. perhaps—harder in his eyes, and that was when she realizes, in the hash bright of the car's headlights—)

_Sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine—_

(—they were nothing like children anymore.)

This is how their first kiss went, two weeks almost day-for-day before their first night (she'd always given him her firsts, hadn't she, and he his? and that's a comfort.): Kaito got tired of waiting. (That's what she believes, anyhow.) And it was not calculated, like what he did (does) usually was (is), but a little awkward, and a little clumsy (he kissed the corner of her mouth first), and only this at first, a brush of the lips.

_Got you where I want you._

She could see him strikingly well in the car's headlights; every curve and dip and bone and shadow of his features. He was, in that unnatural bright, both Kaito and not-Kaito, a little strange, a little untrue, a little too close of water. The mask was a fascinating one.

A brush of the lips (it was), and then a firmer pressure, surprisingly dry and hot, and then long-fingers at the base of her skull; and she did not move until he pulled away, blinking in startled touch. (Who, again?)

There were no words exchanged that evening, and she did not remember exactly how many times they kisses, for she fell asleep on his shoulder. Stray locks brushing his cheek, her nose. Stumbling fingers. Warm breath, whisperings, in her ear.

(_AokoAokoAoko)_

—the moon here is the same as in Japan.

And it frightens her. (A little.)

It's a little worse, a little worse, a little cold. Paris throbs as in water, clenching and expanding in blues and greys and darks, and the harsher gold of the streetlamps. They buzz softly. They buzz softly. And Aoko sobs a bit on the balustrade, because she is nothing short of a girl in a country that is not hers, and she realizes that she is young. (And that is as confusing and scary and thrilling as kissing Kaito for the first time.)

_Sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine_

_Et nos amours…_

_-_

_(a story will count down the few seconds that will stray before the fourth hour strikes._

_hear the clockwork—can you?)_

_-_

**It's strange how this chapter ran away from what I had in mind. It announces the next chapter—and the next, where the plot finally picks up. Aoko needs a breakthrough. Thanks for reading! **


	15. arch

**A/N: I think I'll stop apologizing for the delays, since they're starting to become the normal updating pace. I'll have to pick up again, anyway, if only because I'm leaving in vacation soon and will not leave this unfinished, na-uh. I hope you'll enjoy this anyway.**

**Chapter dedicated to butterfly-chan. Who is, finally, back, after scaring the lights outta me. 3**

**Disclaimer—I'll let you know when I own MK. Till then, I'll go with this.**

**-**

**tired**

**-**

Prompt:—

_We have lingered in the chambers by the sea_

_By seagirls wreathed in seaweed, red and brown,_

_Till human voices wake us, and we drown._

_-_

_(A story can—)_

_-_

Memory comes in with water.

It is not-water that fills the petite hotel room, floods it with blue reflects, drowns it with one too many night's worth of dreams. And a little stranger, then, because Paris is blue and dark in her back, and, despite the streetlamps and windows and buildings, nothing at all like Tokyo. The lights here are not as electric, not as manifold, not as violent. There is something soft in them, something cruelly gentle.

The Eiffel Tower's revolving ray sweeps by in blinding white across the sky, shadeless as though etherized, and then retracts, and strolls away. It will be back in a minute. So it goes. So it will go.

(The October night is cold.)

Aoko rubs her arms warmer and retreats inside the hotel room. She steps back; _and _bumped against solid, realistic flesh. Kaito's hands grabbed hers and swivelled her round; and Kaito's laughing voice:

"Careful where you're going—"

And if the words were serious (scolding, one might think), the tone most definitely was not. So he was up to another prank of his. Aoko defiantly smoothed down her uniform skirt. "Where are you going?"

"… to class?"

"In this part of the building?"

"I could ask you the same question, Aoko-chan."

"Aoko?" Aoko blinked. Kaito was standing a few feet away, hands buried in his jacket pockets, looking puzzled. _(Why are you here? he did not ask. What are you doing here? You should—) _"You coming, or what?"

It was cold and bright in the garden; cold and bright and a winter afternoon. (Or morning or noon—she did not remember. Much. Or morning or noon.) They walked around and most of the trees were bare; they walked around amongst the ancient statues. There was something unreal about this.

A little wrong, then—

A little too on this side of wrong, and Aoko's slap across his face seemed to crumple much—beliefs, trusts, and this share of reality she had carefully constructed with glass-like images. They reflected the mirrors and the lights with swift delicacy and stealth, and subtly hid what it was that she did not want to see.

(She drowned herself in words.)

"Aoko—" his cheek stung.

"Get out!" she yelled _(crack_, the glass images went. _Crack.) _"Out!" and when she woke she woke to Kaito's warm hands on her shoulders and Kaito's worried eyes, their blue subdued in the predawn (ghosts) greys—and Kaito's sleepy face and voice.

"Whatsamatter?" he mumbled lazily, lodging his face in the crook of her neck. "Didya have a nightmare of something?"

"… a nightmare. Yes. Oh, yes." Her hands crept up his back, anchored around his shoulders, steady and strong and _there._ After realization relief flooded, almost breaking past the dam of tears. "It was all, all a nightmare."

"Was it, though?" Kaito murmured in her neck.

_(You should not be here.)_

She woke, and—

"This never happened," she murmured dazedly. She stared at their uniforms, at their surroundings. There never was such a corridor in their school buildings. (Was there?) "This never happened," and she lifted her (a thousand's) eyes to him. "So why—"

Kaito had lost his clownish smile, and (the biggest prank was to come, the fish-bird said.) "Because it is not real. I'm not real? It's a dream, Aoko."

She woke, and,

"Come back. Comebackcomebackcomebackcomebackcomeback—"

She curled on herself, tightly, entwined and crying, whimpering softly like a kicked kitten, trying to hold back the great racking sobs that threatened through her body, hands extended and clawing desperately as what was already gone—

She woke, and,

_(You should not be here, Aoko.)_

"You coming, or what?" Kaito asked, looking annoyed. He was standing a few feet away, hands buried in his pockets. The garden around them unravelled bright and cold, white to the ancient statues that strayed on the frozen grounds, and not like Tokyo at all."

Aoko sobbed a little, and forced the words out of her throat. "… I can't."

He blinked. "Why not? We said we'd take a walk and have a coffee, and then go home—"

She could feel the taste of taste in the cracks of her smile. "That sounds… wonderful. And there's nothing I'd love better than to go with you, and so help me, I _can't._ Because it's—it's just a dream, Kaito. And now I have to—"

—_and then she wakes._

_-_

_(a story can swell and rise—throb gently in hues of blue and crumple together to the first shivers of morning._

_so can dreams.)_

_-_

… **and after that, the plot will (at last) pick up a little. To be perfectly honest, the delay for this chapter was due more to writerblock than to babysitting. I'll do better next time. … I hope. *tentatively offers cookies***


	16. timed

**We have nine chapter to go, counting this one, in a matter of 15-20 days before vacation claims me away from the computer. I think we'll make it. If I can get my muse to stop sleeping at day and writing at night.**

**Chappie dedicated to gemi-chan, aka hattergems, because she's wonderful and deserves a hug. A big hug. A tiger hug. :3**

**Disclaimer—aha. Ahaha. No.**

**-**

**illumination**

**-**

Prompt:—

_one pierced moment whiter than the rest_

_-_

_(a story is—)_

_-_

(After confusion comes peace. After peace, awareness.)

The hotel room is golds and pinks when Aoko wakes up, sprawled over the bed's comforter with her wrinkled Opera dress still on. During one brief, dazzled moment she mingles dawn and sunset, hours with hours and fleeting minutes, but the light has none of the cold reflects of morning; instead, is velveted with the soft hues of falling afternoon.

That feels impossible, since she lost consciousness in the middle of the night, and it feels incongruous that she slept so many hours in so uncomfortable a position, but the alarm clock confirms it. It is four-thirty-two in the afternoon, and a bath seems the one sensible option right now.

It is only when, now refreshed, she drapes herself in a bathrobe and strolls back in her room that she realizes how starving she is. They have dined early the evening previous, in order to reach the Opera in due time, and it has been about twenty hours since she has eaten anything.

She accordingly rings up room service and orders something up, and then settles herself down at the computer again, gathering all three poems before her eyes.

(After peace comes awareness.)

Superposed, they make no sense altogether—or maybe they do, a superior meaning that, given the right twist, the right key, might emerge from chaos, all elements falling neatly into their respective places; and she ponders above them, browsing the Internet for auxiliary data on Verlaine and Rimbaud and Apollinaire. There are links and dissemblances between the three, but the only common point she can find is that they all wrote in the early twentieth century, and all belonged, with some nuances in Apollinaire's case, to the same school of thought.

It is not very helpful. _Paris_ is not very helpful, glistening in gorgeous golds and ravishing reds out on the old buildings of the Grands Boulevards, as distracting perhaps as the ring of the doorbell.

The room service soubrette comes in with a tray and bottle and a delivery boy. He must be just a high school student, at best, even as he flirts with the girl, and his carry is a well-furnished bouquet negligently handed over with the now-familiar formula, _'De la part de Monsieur Paul Sernine, mademoiselle.'_

Aoko scrabbles around in her purse for a tip and stares at the bouquet, finely assembled in circles of tiny petals stringed about white-soft bells. The salmon-tinged ones she thinks are azaleas, but the others—

"Ah—excuse me," she stumbles over the words—"would you happen to know what flowers are these?"

"Of course," the boy gibbers away in heavily-accentuated English, and winks at the maid who saunters down the corridor. "Ah—I think these are azaleas, and these—" pointing at yellow-bright corollas, "yellow lilies, and _these_, the white bells nested in green, are—_ah, comment on dit, _Bells of Ireland, I believe it is."

Bells of Ireland. "Oh. I see. Thank you."

"_À vot' service, mademoiselle," _he says, and with a crooked grin departs.

Bells of Ireland and lilies. Ah, well, it is a pretty bouquet at any rate, and the card displays its sender's name in engraved silver. Aoko hunts down the room for a presentable-looking vase, and then, as she installs it as prettily as possible on the coffee table, ponders over that card again.

_Paul Sernine._

Not for the first time, she is struck by the familiarity that resides in this. She might have read or heard the name anywhere—newspaper, radio program, even somewhere on TV—but somehow it seems to strike a little closer to home. A little farther away in time, too—more within the dream realm of childhood than confined in the realistic measures of adult age.

She realizes this is a little more than ridiculous, but—

_... 'it sounds like the name of someone I know, but I can't figure out who…'_

—it, for some reason, is not.

She bustles off with food and eating and clothes, but the name plays still before her eyes _(P-A-U-L-S-E-R-N-I-N-E_), fleeing and eluding her grasp at understanding the lurid riddle it makes, and she is mocked by the ticking minutes and the silver-engraved card on the coffee table, pretty flowers on the coffee table;

_(pretty darling do not cry)_

—, until, the moment stilled in light, and with an intake in breath that is more of a sob, the chaotic structure changes and shifts and re-organizes itself, surfacing amongst the golds to form beautiful comprehension, magnificent in the late afternoon shine;

_A-R-S-E-N-E-L-U-P-I-N_

(After awareness comes silence.)

-

_(a story is—_

—_always misleading.)_

_-_

**Ta dum ta dum ta. *trots off***


	17. illumination

**So, folks, back at it. One update per day from now on, we don't have much time left. Plus, I've got that HK AU to write for Katie-chan. So, to work, muse, dear.**

**Also, there's been a mix-up in the chapters' titles. This one is the 'illumination' chapter.**

**Disclaimer—no duuuuh. No, I don't own 'em.**

**-**

**illumination**

**-**

Prompt:—

_I am not fond of expecting catastrophes, but there are cracks in the universe._

_-_

_(a story is about—)_

_-_

_Paul Sernine. One of the manifold identities assumed by French robber Arsene Lupin (property of Maurice Leblanc). Used in one of the most famous Lupin books, the '813' series, consisting of—_

(The 813 series. One of Kaito's favourites if there ever were, and though she never read it herself, he used to tell her all about it—and that, _that must be why the name was oh so familiar—)_

_ArseneLupinArseneLupinArseneLupin: _the name twirls and returns like an enticing nursery rhyme, and has the same underlining of death and blood as them—

—and then, as the name, the _name_ begins to register in, it is filled with the same cheap cocketry, proud derision, childish and never-ending laughter as those of the gentleman thief, KID's model, Kaito's finest object of admiration—

Kaito.

(A riddle, it was, like all of them before, a riddle to decipher and then to solve, a—

—riddle. (Full stop.))

And in the golden pinks of approaching sunset (those that fill her hotel room like coral on water), Aoko gasps and grasps at the various papers, the various poems, _gathers_ them together, finds conjunctions and resemblances, and oh, kami, why did she never see this before—

And the solution does not spring to her as easily, as effortlessly, but requires thought and attention, requires what, in all her flurry about books and libraries an flower bouquets and opera evenings, she never _entirely _given those few words

(and they create an universe they do)

sprinkled, inked, on paper.

'_They believed that it was in the fusion, the alliance between two elements that usually do not mingle, and in the vision of that alliance, that one could find the very essence of these elements,' _Sernine said, and hints and hints these all were, but you had to recognize them as such before you could use them—a treasure that has been well-hidden and discarded for more enticing riches (the fine of a Luxembourg afternoon, An Evening At The Opera) but displays more fascinating and ultimately precious depths.

Light on water, sky and water—_c'est la mer allée avec le soleil—_and this all points to one end don't you see?

So she has when, and then a closer view of _when_, and she has where, but she needs the pinpoint side of _where, _because Paris is long, and the Seine longer still. It could be anywhere, and she glances at the window, at the veil-like curtains bathed in salmon pink, wondering, wondering, will today be too late?

The sun is slow and low over the oranged rooftops.

_La mélancolie _

_Des soleils couchants_

The ringing phone disintegrates this fantasy.

"Aoko? Saguru here—" and the voice, distant and somewhat muffled, sounds strange over the unknown wires, as though she has passed through a thousand worlds in the blazing glow of the setting suns— "I think I have discovered something about that Sernine man—Aoko, are you here?"

—_when's the last time she heard Japanese?_

"I am here," she says dully.

"Good. Now listen, I looked through newspapers and articles to know who he was—"

'_Look at that barge. It's been anchored here two weeks, and it's never moved. I've seen the owner come and go, but he never takes the barge way. It's an old boat, so far as I know, a museum piece, not fit to travel—'_

Two weeks.

"—and the funny thing was, you see, there was _nothing. _No article clipping, no headlines, nothing—and I was sure I'd heard the name before. There was no birth evidence, either, so I thought I'd best run a global search—"

Two weeks. _Vienne la nuit, sonne l'heure—les jours s'en vont, je demeure. _Everyday passes, I…

—_I_ remain. (What's the title of that poem again?)

"—and I realized, Paul Sernine's really an alias for Arsene Lupin! Aoko, that means Kuroba—"

_The Mirabeau Bridge. "Oh—"_ Aoko gasps, and stumbles for the door, for her shoes and jacket, without bothering to hang up the phone, leaving it to repeat, Aoko, Aoko, like a broken parrot, in the hotel room that fills with water and light.

-

_(a story is about completion.)_

_-_

**See you tomorrow, dears.**


	18. truth

**Well, looks like I'm able to keep my updates now. Still makes it awkward, not having a laptop to type on, but the family computer is getting a little more comfortable with my ways, so I guess I'll be fine.**

**Chappie dedicated to delyrical, because she writes awesome reviews. And she makes me laugh. :3**

**Disclaimer—heh. Still nope.**

**-**

**truth**

**-**

Prompt:—

_in a garden of bright images_

_-_

_(a story—)_

_-_

The sun is almost close to setting, and Aoko is running. The light splays in soft hues above Paris and the long, straight street that leads inevitably to the Comédie-Française, to the Louvre, and Aoko has a race against it, against the slow, silently deafening night to come. She is running, and Paris around her is but a blur through the clouded version of her breath.

It is a little cold, and this is Sunday, and this makes for half-deserted streets. Aoko not part-relieve for that, not so much because she knows she looks a mess with her hair and clothes in such disarray, but because she does not wish, not even for a moment, to be retained.

And it is only now that she realizes, sprinting through half-empty Paris in all the reds and golds of approaching, closing sunset, how absolutely stupid she has been.

_Answers always are right in front of our eyes._

Verlaine and Rimbaud and Apollinaire. It might be counted as ironic, this, this development, this final twist in the deus ex- machina-prepared plot she was only a pawn of. Because the answer was Verlaine all along, the very first poem she received, and the other two were but precisions of the result that was already in place. Always there, immaterial, extemporal.

'_Une aube affaiblie_

_Verse par les champs_

_La mélancolie_

_Des soleils couchants…'_

—that, and,

'_Elle est retrouvée. _

_Quoi? —L'Éternité._

_C'est la mer allée_

_Avec le soleil.'_

Aoko jogs past the Comédie-Française.

The Setting Suns. That in itself is both time and location both place and moment whence one is waiting for one other—the very minute and the very spot of sky meeting earth, of sun meeting water. _C'est la mer allée…_

It is that brief, ethereal second between day and night, when the last fluttering reflects of the dying sun seem to drown, _sink_, into the wary green depths of water… and without any sea to go by, where does sky meet water in Paris—the Seine.

She reaches it in a quarter of an hour, breathless and hurried on the damp quays, along the green, metallic boxes of book-sellers. Passing on one of the bridges, crossing the long winding river, take a look down and above, at the grey-green depths, at the endless blue, though tinged with white and grey. The sun is setting now—

—_setting_ the Seine and its surroundings aflame, the long water and the cobbled quays and the strict building walls on each side, the glistening globe of the Pantheon roof and, behind your back, the twin square spires of Notre-Dame. All dying, Paris dying a little death, in all the gorgeous golds and oranges, all the blazing reds that bursts on the waters' surface, and then, slowly, mercilessly, dissolve and drown within them.

'_They believed that it was in the fusion of two absolutely separate elements, such as light and water, that they could discern the true essence of these two elements, and thereby eternity.' _And it is, it _is_. Light on water; light in water. Warmth and liquidity, two distinct sensations moulding as but one. Fusion. _Synaesthesia._

And nearing the Mirabeau bridge—

(Deciphered, the riddle runs thus—_Everyday, at the hour when the sun sets on the Seine, by the Mirabeau bridge—)_

—the barge is anchored there.

_(—I will be waiting for you.)_

It is painted in green and blue, swaying lightly under the tide brewed about by a metallic-white speedboat that soon disappears past one of the bridge's columns. In contrast, the barge feels old and slow, quietly still, and fundamentally at home.

Aoko comes down the stone steps to access the lower quay and the thin wooden gangway that links the bank to board. It trembles underfoot, and hardly has she set a shoe on deck, that a sharp bark nearly upsets her. And then her hands are full of black-and-white hair and cheerful enthusiastic dog who happily nibbles on her fingers.

"Tout-Va-Bien," she breathes, absently petting him. (So she was right, she was right.) "Where's your master?" —crouching down to his level— "Is he on board?"

Tout-Va-Bien barks such a bark that is almost a laugh, laps at her face once, and then trots off toward and through a petite, green door. Aoko blinks and follows, hesitantly through a lightless, narrow passage, more firmly into a smallish cabin furnished with curtains and carpets and cushions. Sprawled over the couch, black hair splayed over a makeshift pillow of coloured scarves, Kaito sleeps.

-

_(a story is this:_

_light and reflection of light onto water.)_

_-_

**Dun dun. See you tomorrow.**


	19. trickster

**Nothing much to say, expect for thanks. Your reviews are the reason behind my keeping updates… so far. You cheer me up, all of you. So thanks! have some cookies.**

**Disclaimer—*weepth in a corner* n-no. Triple alas.**

**-**

**trickster**

**-**

Prompt:—

'_I have had to pull down brick by brick the barriers I had built up by my own selfishness and folly. If, in all these years, I have managed to get back to the point at which I ought to have started, will you tell me so and give me lease to begin again?'_

_-_

_(a story is about—)_

_-_

Kaito wakes the way would a drowning man, with only a half-breathed gasp under Tout-Va-Bien's repetitive nudges. One long-fingered hand grapples up before blue eyes even blink open; entangles with the black-and-white hair too pull his pet away. (Tout-Va-Bien whines at little, at that, as though disclosing a secret.)

"Tout-Va—what. I told you not to wake me up—" and his voice is just a little graver, a little hoarser, then she thought it used to be; and absolutely accent-free, "—sun's not even set—"

"… Kaito."

One brief second is for shock in the cobalt eyes before they lift: and. He smiles, slow and quiet and adamantly thankful, sitting on the couch with his hands at his sides. Sernine flickers briefly over his features, because he's clearly got some make-u still on, but then he moves, and the moment passes. And he looks _young. _He looks more carefree than Sernine ever did, sitting there in these black slacks and mussed shirt, sleeves baldly rolled-up at the elbows.

"… hey there."

(And he sounds so _flippant_ that her control snaps.)

She manages to register in the first slap she delivers on him before her movements get frantic and she just kicks blindly, scrabbling at anything and everything that's good enough to throw, hit and hurt. She's breathless and hot, and underneath her hand and fingers and nails are flesh and muscle; she barely realizes that she's half-screeching, half-sobbing insults (Jerk! Jerk! You bastard, how could _you—)_ before

_(instinctive reflexes kick in and)_

he tosses her back against the couch and holds her wrists on each side of her, leaving them to breathe harshly in each other's faces. Aoko struggles, but then (and. _pause. _back to) Kaito's eyes are wide and panicked, and it chills her to understand that despite their respective positions _she _is the one in control. (He is terrified, no longer the feline-relaxed stance he displayed while sleeping and it startles and stills her.)

Tout-Va-Bien has fled the scene, and the slight rocking of the barge makes her feel insecure, imbalanced.

"How could you?" she hisses, and his fingers unwind from around her wrists and trickle back down to his sides. He is kneeling before her now, she half-lying on the couch, and propped up on her elbows; reddened light seeps in through the cabin's porthole, shifting over a sharp cheekbone. "How could you lie to me again like that?"

"Aoko—"

"Shut up!" (Hysteria builds.) "You just shut up! How could you after _KID? _after everything, after not telling me about it for years in the first place, after all your pretty apologies to me back then—how _could you, Kaito? How dare you lie to me again?"_

"I'm sorry. I—"

"Paul Sernine? _Paul Sernine?" _She shakes hair away from her eyes breath quickened almost to panting, and wants to tear at him, claw at him— "And that wild goose chase with all your French poems—_do you have fun ordering me around, Kuroba Kaito?"_

"_Aoko—" _a steel-like hand clamps down on her mouth. "Please, let me explain."

And she grits her teeth, but nods. The fingers loosen their visceral grip.

"I did not intend to play off as Paul Sernine at first," he avows, eyes drooped and slow. "But then when I called Ruby Jones to warn her you'd probably enter in contact with her—" (Aoko makes a soft, throaty sound at that) "—and she called me back the next day to say you _had_—I just couldn't— …. I just couldn't wait till you have solved the riddle, Aoko." —imploring. "I _had _to see you, don't you see—"

He looks helpless and bothered, very still before her, and Aoko straightens a little on the couch.

"I do _not_ see. Why that riddle, anyway? Why not simply sending me word that you wanted to see me? Why not simply picking up the phone—"

"Because I can't be satisfied with no guarantee at ever seeing you again anymore," he asserts bluntly. (And for the first time today, she sees him not only as Kaito, magician extraordinaire, but as the friend, the lover who once—) "I want a look-out for us or nothing at all… I read somewhere that love must either lie down in laughter or make its bed in hell—that there's no middle way." He lets out a brief, harping laugh. "And by the time I realized how much my being Sernine could and would hurt you, it was too late to back out of the matter."

He shrug is a little, dejected thing. "I can only say that I am sorry, Aoko. Now whether or not you decide to forgive is all up to you."

She kicks him.

He lands flat on his back, the frown on his face (in his eyes) smoothing out into bewilderment. She is half-straddling him before he can move a mere limb, however. "You are _never_ to pull off something like that on me again," she warns. "No more lying, Kaito, or I'm out of here _this_ instant."

The corners of his mouth soften. "Understood," he murmurs, gentle and fine and oh, almost like she remembered from back when the days were both cold and sweet, and tangling nimble fingers in her hair, he brings her down with him.

-

_(a story is about many things, but—_

_ultimately, a story is about love.)_

_-_

**I think you'll like next chapter, gents. *cackles***

**On a side note, I've been doing another of these 50-sentences fics. They're mostly exercises in style and a way to canalize my AUs really, but should anyone be interested in reading them, I'll put them up gladly. Just lemme know.**


	20. occasion

**I need a vacation. I'm finishing this, and then I'll be off for a month. *is living on needles right now. that, and fics* On a completely unrelated note, to all French people out there (if any), happy July fourteenth! (fireworks. whoo.)**

**Disclaimer­—I don't own Magic Kaito. If I did, this would've happened ages ago.**

**-**

**occasion**

**-**

Prompt:—

_lay awake in lust and rust in the rain_

_-_

_(a story is about—)_

_-_

It would be difficult to say who crosses the bridge of first kisses first. Aoko knows they most certainly are not there anymore, but much further away, on the carpet in the cabin, where the dying sun soaks them with the red-fine hour. It is the golds of dusk that flicker between their parting, meeting mouths, and Aoko's fingers bury in Kaito's hair.

Hands entangle.

_(finally i've waited so long to see you)_

They have come far. They have come through childhood and adulthood barely unscathed, together and then apart, an it's more than a little experience that goes a long way. But now that they reclining against the sunset cushions of Kaito's bed-couch, in the swaying _péniche_, there is just a little way to go, a few inches to cross, and they realize that they are real and very much _here._

They have come far.

They see clearly now everything it was that they wanted, and what little of it they still want is right there in their arms? It makes them smile.

And because they are no longer children, what is now is the total awkwardness of their first time, nor the perfect typhoon of their last, in the rain-damp alley with their drenched clothes. It is slow, Kaito's fingertips running down the side of her jaw, and he presses her back against the covers. It is slow and fie and ultimately good, and they take their time, unhurriedly, to discover each other's body with only faint traces of that shame which used to taint their faces red.

And this is all they need, in the end, and it's taken them years and hundreds, hundreds of miles, a whole new city far into the unknown, to realize that: heat and laughter and the swift, uncertain flutter of increasing heartbeats. It's all they need, and it might just be that the world is ending, as two bodies become one.

Of tonight, there are only so many things Aoko will remember in time—the way Kaito's damp hair sticks to his forehead, the salty taste of their slow kisses, the got look of their entwined fingers, the fading colours of day to night, the soft roar of the Seine… she carries them like a treasure.

(And then when it's over, they realize it's not.)

--

And when morning comes and Aoko wakes, befuddled and disorientated, the red is neither empty nor cold; but Kaito's arm marks a weight across her waist, and Kaito's chest is a grounding warmth against her back. The cabin is all pale lights, and Aoko does not feel very sleepy anymore.

Kaito whimpers a little as she wriggles out o his hold. (He looks boyish in sleep.) Her clothes are god-knows-where, and so to spare time she slips on a discarded robe, silky and blue and swift like water to the skin. The door creaks a little as it closes, and she steps on deck.

It is early and cold out. Tout-Va-Bien, who apparently was sleeping on a roll of rope, stretches and yawns and trots up to meet her with a sleepy lap at her palms and a nudge to her knees. Aoko laughs, and leads him toward the prow, towards east, where she knows the sun is about to rise.

The morning is pastels across the Seine. With the predawn fog not quite yet dissolved, everything is blues and whites and pale greys that blur our the shapes and silhouettes. Aoko tightens the robe across her chest and sits down, legs to the side, where Tout-Va-Bien curls up, nose pressing against her calf. Her fingers linger on his collar.

The lights are growing steadily from silver to white-gold when there is a _clank_ inside, and Kaito appears a few minutes later, in slacks and a grey turtleneck pull-over, with two mugs of hot tea. "Enjoying yourself?" he grins, sitting down next to her. Tout-Va-Bien growls and scoots back in-between them.

She smiles, and it's wonderful, being able to smile at him this carefreely, again. "Very."

(He tastes a little like tea.)

So he takes her hand again, in a way that is incredibly _normal_, and they have their quiet morning.

When the sun does rise, it is slowly, unhurriedly, soft lines of gold forming together to frame the river and the tall walls. There is no (as she expected) harsh contrast between the predawn pastels and the incoming light, but instead they seem to mould together, growing into higher and truer hues, and that minute is brief and ethereal and only lights. _Impression, rising sun._

"Beautiful," Aoko breathes.

"Yeah," Kaito agrees, but he is not looking at the sunrise.

And when she turns to him, with an eyebrow raised and an arch smile _(finally finally), _he takes in a breath as though to jump and says, "Come live with me."

-

_(—completion.)_

-

**Five more chapters to go, c'mon… we'll make it. *survives on cookies and tea***


	21. undercover

**Well, no, Katie-chan, things might not go **_**quite**_** as you expect. Don't lock 'em up, though. I'll need them to amuse myself in vacation. (Away from you alllll. ;o;) I think you'll like the ending though :3**

**Disclaimer—*closes eyes and wishes hard* *opens them again* … nope.**

**-**

**undercover**

**-**

Prompt:—

_and the pool was filled with water out of sunlight_

_-_

_(a story is always a lie.)_

_-_

"Live with you?" Aoko repeats blankly. "You mean here? on this barge?"

"Wherever. Aoko, I—' the fingers, long fingers, magician's fingers, tighten around hers, "I don't have much to offer you. Because of KID, I never stay long in one place, both to avoid drawing suspicion and to target new gems…. we wouldn't have a home of our own, you wouldn't be able to see your family and friends very often, and we probably can't get married…. but if you're willing to cope with that, and, by any change, come live with me under these conditions, then please, Aoko, do so.

"There would be—compensations, I guess. I could show you around, introduce you to new people, enable you to live through occasions you've never dreamt of—or have dreamt of too much." His hand gestures vaguely in the general direction of where she knows is the Opera. "There are so many places where I thought, I wish Aoko could be here with me—we could be anything and everything, Aoko. Anyone we want. Please—" and his hands, which were waving in a search for the sun, for the moon, for the stars, lower again, gentle and thankful, to frame her face. "Please. I want to show you every corner of this world."

It would a new beginning, she thinks, leaning into the touch. A clean, fresh start, a start from scratch all over again—a way to be everything and everywhere one never could be before. A life with Kaito is bound to be exalting and adventurous and nothing short of wonderful, but—

But.

"So in other words," she says, slowly, "you're asking me to leave everything—to quit my job, my friends, my family, my _life_—to come here with you? to leave them behind, to hardly ever see them again­—to drop _every_thing—to come into your life instead?"

He is silent one second; two. "Yes," he says, at long last, gravely. "That's exactly what I'm asking you." A taut smile twitches the corner of his lips. "I'm aware that of the selfish things I've inflicted on you, this one is probably the most so."

She nods. Her head is dipped, and she sees nothing of the clear river light, even though the sun is now risen and the Seine not so silent as it were. Tout-Va-Bien whimpers a little, asking to be pet. Somewhere upriver echoes the roar of a starting boat.

"Kaito. Kaito, I—"

"Hey." Fingers tangle with her hair so soft it might be just a passing windfall. "You don't have to give me a definite answer right now. We have all the time in the world—tell you what." (And these is something faintly excited in his voice, so reminiscent of when back in high school he would pull off a prank of the whole class that she lifts her eyes to him, hands twining with his like autumn leaves.) "You still have two weeks left of your leave from Japan, don't you?"

She doesn't ask how he knows that. "Yes… but—"

"Then spend them with me."

She blinks.

"Spend them with me," he repeats, sounding fond and vaguely amused. "We'll live on this barge—or if we get tired of it I've got a little place in high Montmartre we can go to. Just the two of us—well, three of us," he admits, laughing, as Tout-Va-Bien lodges his had on her lap and his hind legs on his, "as a couple. I'll show you around. There are so many places I want you to see—

"And then," he adds, more gentle now, as though feeling with soft-touched hands what he thought was fragile glass and discovering it touches back, "then tell me your answer. When you know. When you're really sure."

She looks at him, and despite last night it is only now that she fully sees her childhood friend, and everything that this realization implies, in the man sitting across from her. It is only now that the reality of KID, of Paul Sernine, really registers in, and all is calm.

_(how much more selfish can we get, she wonders)_

—and she finds it doesn't matter.

"Okay," she says, and is immediately overwhelmed by his eyes and hands and lips, and Tout-Va-Bien, a bit confused, tries to squeeze in between them, growling a little for his own share of attention, until a wolf-whistle manages to separate them. (It comes from a passing barge.)

"_C'est la saison des amours, les tourteraux?" _a man exclaims, splashing water everywhere.

'_Va te faire foutre," _Kaito replies, albeit amiably, and the sailor roars with laughter and prattles away downriver to whatever destination he's leaning toward. Tout-Va-Bien barks down the _péniche_ after him.

"Friend of yours?" Aoko asks, her back against the parquet.

"You get to know the strangest people on the river," Kaito says, and that somehow makes her throat feel a little stuck _(how long has he been waiting here for me?)_; but the sun has risen high and fair, and the water-sounds are soft and low, and when he kisses again it is with all the distinct fine of youth and laughter.

-

_(but it's a beautiful lie at that.)_

_-_

_**C'est la saison des amours, les tourteraux?—**_**Love's come around for you, lovebirds?**

_**Va te faire foutre—**_**fuck off.**

***sips tea* *has stolen the habit from gemi-chan***


	22. clandestine

**And so because of a (-nother) mixup with my chapters, I ended up not-writing the one I'd intended for today at all. *headwall* I've had all the troubles with this fic. I hope you enjoy it nonetheless?**

**Disclaimer—Gosho-sama owns. Rostand, too.**

**-**

**clandestine**

**-**

Prompt:—

_I'll keep the lights out, I'll tell you fairytales_

_-_

_(a story is like—)_

_-_

The following days are amongst the most blissful Aoko has known.

Kaito proves himself to be a kind, fond lover, albeit as boyish and mischievous as in high school days she remembers him. Sometimes the ghost of those long-dead times comes floating back, when in the mellow glory of the evening lamps Kaito's face is enshadowed and soft; but soon the blue tides of the Seine come roaring back in tumbling waves, and they fall, exhausted and happy, into bed and sleep.

He shows here round. He shows her round Paris, not only the crowded places that the mass knows and runs to, the historical monuments—but the secret places, the careful places, well-hidden in their nest of entrances and alleyways, those that every city possesses but no tourist ever stays to see. It is calm here, especially when fall carries away the last of summer's stifling heat and leaves but a breeze playing with the leaves… and the silence there is startling and troubling.

"Dad liked Paris," Kaito explains during one of these carefree strolls, Tout-Va-Bien trotting by their side. "Love it, even. After I left Japan, I discovered in his old library lots of books about Paris, with his annotations. I followed them all—much like a treasure hunt— And then of course—" here he stifles a laugh, "there is Lupin. His footsteps are all over the place…"

"When did you get Tout-Va-Bien?" Aoko asks at the sunset hour, when light and river are tainted with the same softness and the same velvet like paint in water. "You didn't have him with you two years ago?"

Here Kaito is honest enough to look a little bashful. "Actually, I bought him a little while after our last meeting." Here Aoko is embarrassed enough to look a little red. "After we parted in that street, I felt, I guess, discontented for a couple days. Couldn't do anything right. Even pissed off Jii-chan… so one evening I got fed up, walked into a pet shop and bought him, mostly for comfort I'd say. He's become a precious friend over the months, though."

"But Tout-Va-Bien?"

"Picked the name out of an Arsene Lupin book. Plus, I wanted something positive. Tout-Va-Bien. All is well."

(Aoko laughs.)

They play. They pretend nothing is out of the ordinary with their current situation, when there is hardly anything that isn't. They are friend and they are lovers, and then friends again, and then lovers once more. They live a thousand adventures. And they play, to keep pretending that they don't; turn by turn princesses and heroes; witches and knights; fated lovers; dead enemies; thieves. Turn by turn Tout-Va-Bien is made the fierce dragon or the valiant companion or the strict father or the scheming villain of the talking horse.

They play. They imagine themselves into roles. They live by fairytales.

And to keep by the irony of this, they go see _others_ play. One evening, at the Comédie-Française, they see _Cyrano_, from the red-velvet loge and the red-velvet seats, over the golden tail of the balustrade. And coming back along the _quais de la Seine, _in the blued midnight along the river, Kaito repeats the foreign words, rolling them on his tongue like a treat,

'_On se devine à peine,_

_Vous voyez la noirceur d'un long manteau qui traine,_

_J'aperçois la blancheur d'une robe d'été:_

_Moi qui ne suis qu'une ombre, et vous qu'une clarté!'_

… this, and,

'_Quels mots me direz-vous? Tous ceux, tous ceux, tous ceux_

_Qui me viendront, je vais vous les jeter, en touffe,_

_Sans les metre en bouquets: je vous aime, j'étouffe,_

_Je t'aime, je suis fou, je n'en peux plus, c'est trop,_

_Ton nom est dans mon coeur comme dans un grelot…'_

And he laughs, but like a childish boy laughs; and then, as though to contradict his own contradiction, hoists her up across his chest in one fluid, easy movement, and carries her to the couch, smothering her with smooth kisses and the long, skilful fingers that draw out breathy gasps and moans…

(But then, at night, there is the dead uncertainty of days to come. Kaito breathes softly in her shoulder (he likes to spoon; it's one of the little things they've discovered), and it seems that the cabin is underwater, all in blues and darks and the swaying reflects of the river's lights. The air's a little cold against Aoko's bare arms.

It feels a little strange, a little wrong. Living with Kaito is more than tempting, when his hands are on her skin and his lips pressed to her nape.

But while she allows herself to believe in fairytale by day, when the light shuns and blinds, at night she knows better than to think she is a high school student all over again. There are responsibilities she has, and she knows fairly well she cannot just ignore them.

There will be time, though. There will be time for thinking and acting, and for now, during these few precious hour when water and air form one, it is alright. She settles back against Kaito's chest, shifting into the arm that crosses her waist. Surely, they will be alright.)

-

_(kings and queens and princes and dragons and witches and the isolated ivory tower._

_fairytales.)_

_-_

_**Cyrano de Bergerac **_**is a play written by Edmond Rostand at the end of the nineteenth century. As of this day, it's one of the most well-loved plays in France, and its representations are generally a success. The latest, at the Comédie-Française last winter, was gorgeous. The excellent translation by Christopher Fry for the two extracts I used follows as such:**

'_**It's marvellous to be half-lost**_

_**Just a darkness moving; and you a ghost**_

_**In your white summer dress—merely the light**_

_**Conversing with a shadow in the night.'**_

**And:**

'_**With what words will you say it? All of them, all words, all**_

_**The words my heart knows, like flowers hurled**_

_**In wild disorder over a summer world.**_

_**I love, I am choked with love, I love, I rave**_

_**With love, more love there cannot be, it brims**_

_**And overflows, a cataract of dreams.**_

_**Your name rings like a sheep-bell in my heart…'**_

**(… why yes I am crazy enough to have sought out the English translating **_**and**_** bought it, shut up. 8D)**


	23. hesitation

**(oh how I love thunderstorms /random thought) Okay, so, three chapters left. We're getting definitely closer to home now... Chappie dedicated to butterfly-chan, because today's the day she's supposed to come back from exam realm, and there's been no sign of her so far. ;o;**

**Disclaimer—I don't plan on making any money off of this, yadda yadda yadda.**

**-**

**hesitation**

**-**

Prompt:—

_a sailor's daughter, a child of the water, too proud to be a queen_

_-_

_(a story is about—)_

_-_

Paris at night. From Montmartre the sight is even more breathtaking than from the Grands Boulevards. The city is strewn with lights, a circular cloth sprinkled with sparkles that glint dangerously off. Golden and silver. At times, regularly, the circular ray of the Eiffel Tower comes and drowns that effect in shadeless bright.

The glass is a little cold.

Inside, there is warmth, and there is light. Kaito's little place is widely different from the barge down on the Seine—wider, opener. The large windowpane gives onto a long, descending street, Paris bursting up to fill the view. The furniture is elegant and most of all comfortable—the armchairs deep, the carpet warm and softly coloured. There is something fine here, within the four walls.

From the kitchen come in the muffled clanks of Kaito making dinner. It is the last day, the last evening, and Kaito fixes something a little more consequent than the quick meals they have lived by these last two weeks. Tout-Va-Bien, stretched out on the carpet and immobile, assumes the role, it seems, of a fireplace rug.

Aoko glances at the table, at the lit candles that provide almost all the light in the room. _Diner aux chandelles_, in true French tradition. The wine is red and precious in the balloon glasses.

The atmosphere is enveloping her like a cocoon, and it makes it almost unbearable.

(—domesticity.)

It would be fine, so fine, so fine­—to stay here forever. Life would be fine here, and she'd probably learn to speak French somewhere along the way. Life would be fine. Tout-Va-Bien snoring a little, the radio crackling, Kaito making dinner.

Life would be fine.

But that would be impossible, she reminds herself, because Kaito never, ever stays in one place. Kaito's a runner, and so, so is she, in her own way. (Proof of that is, he comes out of the kitchen now.)

He wears clothes widely reminding of that of a waiter, black and white, wiping the dishcloth on his arm. They enhance his eyes, blue on blue on blue (she drowns, she drowns, and she does not yet dare tell him.)

"Dinner will be ready in twenty," he announces cheerfully, and instantly notices, because, well, when hasn't he noticed anything? "Aoko?"

She does not lift her eyes to him. "I—Kaito. I've taken my decision."

The slow dip of the leather couch plowing underneath his weight; he sits down next to her. "… aha. And by the look on your face I guess it's not a very happy decision. Am I right? Aoko?" With one hand he lifts the curtain of her hair from her face.

"Kaito—I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I am. I really am—" and she babbles. She'd sworn to herself she wouldn't. She babbles. She loses control. "I wish I could—I wish I could say yes. But I can't—there's—there's nothing I'd love better than to come live with you, but I, I can't just give up on my life, on my job, on my friends, on my dad… I can't."

She has started to cry somewhere halfway, and the tears' salty taste shakes her into awareness. Kaito's hand weights like gold on her shoulder. "I'm s-s-sorry. I'm so—"

"Aoko—shh. Aoko. It's fine." His arm encircles her waist, pulls her up against his chest, nudges her face against his shoulder. One hand buries in her hair, straying among the black strands. "It's alright. I understand."

Her hand clutches the front of his shirt and she sobs a little.

"I—I'd begun to expect so. It's alright, Aoko. Don't worry."

"But—" She pulls herself up a little, "I just—I don't want to—"

"I don't want to lose you," Kaito finishes, in a low voice. "Neither do I, Aoko. It's not—it's not like it's _over_ between us. I told you. I want an outlook for us or nothing. And if we can _get _an outlook, whatever it is, I'll take it gladly, with bare hands."

He grabs her shoulders, straightens her as much as he straightens himself, fixes a point of control, an axis on which the world suddenly spins. He is, unexpectedly, grinning. "Look. How many leaves a year can you get from your job?"

"I—" the practical question startles her, and she blinks tears away, hands coming up to entwine with Kaito's. "Oh—er. Three weeks a semester, plus unused sick days."

"Right. Then let's say this—every year, at the end of October, we'll meet. Here. In Paris. For two or three weeks, together—down at the barge, or here, wherever doesn't matter. We'll have a fortnight to be what we can't be all year—_everything_ we can't be all year—can you imagine what that makes?"

"Kaito—" she is not smiling, but close, close to— "are you sure? you're ready to make such a—"

"Are you?" he asks pointedly.

"I—I guess."

"Then we're good." He kisses the corner of her mouth, laughing a little. "It's fine, Aoko. We don't have to be like everybody else to love each other. Besides—" and a little of the old, larger-than-life mischief returns to his eyes, "if this our last night together for a year minus two weeks, we might as well make it a night to remember."

(And Aoko laughs.)

-

_(a story is all about choices._

_hush, pretty darling.)_

_-_

**Not exactly angst, not exactly fluff either. I feel fine with that balance, personally. See you tomorrow?**


	24. eternal

**Ahh, well, look at this. New chapter. Will wonders ever cease. *is tired* Chappie dedicated to all of you readers and reviewers, because your feedback is amazing and kind and warm, and I probably would have given up on this if it wasn't for you all.**

**Disclaimer—Yeah, sure. I totally own MK. /sarcasm, yes.**

**-**

**eternal**

**-**

Prompt:—

'_It isn't possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.'_

_-_

_(a story—)_

_-_

This is how Aoko leaves: quietly, at the crack of morning, when the baker shops are hardly opening. Kaito walks some way with her, down the long Montmartre streets to the flatters Boulevards—

_(altitude creates. vertigo, and then you—_

_you fall.)_

—leaving her at the corner of the avenue, along the _passages couverts_, lamps growing to their day-lit glow in between the metallic bars. It is hardly morning, and the streets are still deep in their blue coating. (They haven't slept a minute this night.)

"Well," she says, and he laughs and tucks a strand of her hair back behind her ear.

"Well, don't look so gloomy. We're not saying _adieu_, but _au revoir. _It's nothing like a funeral."

(It is, though. It's a funeral of days.)

"You're right," she says, and that's enough to bring her smile to her lips. It's a smile that hasn't changed, even over the years and miles, and Kaito finds himself suddenly thankful that everything happened the way it did, albeit with a few mishaps. Ah, well. Happens all the time.

It might be a stupid, romantic notion, but he likes thinking they wouldn't be where they are now (_standing_ where they stand now) if they hadn't made the mistakes they did make.

"Cheer up," he repeats, and his hand on her neck makes it no hurry to slither away at all. "We'll always have—"

"Paris?" she completes with a grin that ends almost in a sob, because, _oh god, it's true, it really is. We will. We do. _(She used to cry when she watched that movie.

She used to cry her eyes out and then smile, because it didn't make it any less beautiful, and Kaito, sitting on the other end of the couch, used to stretch out his jean-clad legs comfortably and say,)

"You and your mood-swings," he laughs, and then, just for teasing, and because he's _Kaito_, and therefore would be an insufferable prick if he wasn't her best friend _—lover— _"Are you PMS-ing or something?"

She glares at him at little. "_You _know fairly well that I am not," she says, and it's difficult to say whether it's her words or the blush that seeps onto her face that makes him falter a bit. He grins, though. Widely.

The next kiss is soft and slow and tastes a little like almonds.

"See you," Kaito murmurs, lips against lips still.

"Yeah," Aoko admits. And then Aoko leaves.

She doesn't, of course, until the next morning, because her plane is at seven and Saguru comes to fetch her up at the train station. "_Gare de Lyon," _her friend's familiar voice checks over the hotel phone. The quality sucks, but it's good to hear his warm, accentuated tones. "_You sure you can find your way to it?"_

"I think I'll manage. After three weeks I've learnt to understand Paris," she says, airily, and then adds, more subduedly and with a hidden smile that he does not see, but does hear, "I think, anyhow. I should."

"_Aoko—"_

Aoko— and then the conversation ends there, because she isn't quite ready to discuss that yet.

And if she does cry that night, in her bed, well, it was only to be expected, and it's strange that she doesn't feel at all like those romance stories heroines she used to love. _(I'll always wait for you— _and no, not really, in the end.)

It's nowhere near a fairytale ending, because she has _made_ a choice out of beaten gold, and that's not what fairytale princesses do. She has left the cocoon of what was understandable and what wasn't, and there she is in the fresh air (though not really, for the covers care warm and nesting)of what she'd like to see as another morning.

But it's not, not really, and it's still night, and Paris moves in clear-light lines on her ceiling plane, through the gaps at the window. There is a streetlamp just outside the blinds, and sometimes, in a roar, cars pass down the Boulevards with thunder-sounding honks that startle her from her doze.

She curses herself a thousand times.

She'd like to tell herself it's all for the best. She'd like to think it's all the more romantic, meeting but once a year, missing each other for all the months that separate fall from fall. She tries to picture herself as such; patient, consecrated, loving, faithful, content. (But she doesn't feel like it, she doesn't feel like it at all.

She feels miserable. She feels needy. She feels like she has just lost the man she loves, despite all his tries, one-by-one, to bring them back together. She feels like she's made a choice and she still doesn't know if it was the right one, in the end.)

Images, man-made images seem to fail her one by one. They shower her with gold.

Golden showers from the ceilings of her hotel room, and she might be dreaming, now.

-

_(a story speaks of what is past and what replaces it in here and now._

_a story always remembers.)_

_-_

**I'm not too satisfied with this chapter, to speak the truth. Ah, well, see you tomorrow for the closing, yes?**


	25. sunlight

**Well, gents, here we are—the end at last. It's taken some time, and there's been a fair few mishaps along the way, but I think I'm quite content with the direction this took. My aim was to show that you didn't have to live and be married with someone all day long to love them, but as to whether I've succeeded—well, you tell me.**

**Final chapter dedicated to Fyliwion-sama-sempai, who inspired the whole fic in the first place, and is doing wonders with her current updates. Thank you.**

**Disclaimer—If I owned MK, well… I wouldn't be able to write fic, now would I?**

**-**

**sunlight**

**-**

Prompt:—

'_And nobody better than you, wonderful Tout-Va-Bien, All-Is-Well, would be able to prove to us, with a thousand proofs, all of them more convincing than the ones that came before, that in life everything always gets better, and that All Is Well…'_

_-_

_(a story does not start.)_

_-_

A train station is a metaphor for departures.

It is not really that you are not quite gone, it is not really that you are about to go; it is that you are gone, in truth, from the moment you set foot on the white-washed tiles of the quays, and that even though your body is still remaining physically present on the floor of that place you're hereby leaving, there is no longer any sign of your ever having been there in the first place.

The _gare de Lyon_, thus called despite being situated in Paris, is a tall, metallic affair, though the old structure of stone still holds, strong and wide and large and an anchor into this French world Aoko is leaving. It is crowded with tourists—Frenchpeople and strangers, men and women, adults and toddlers, meddling together in a funny melting-pot of cultures and tongues for the brief minutes it takes them to cross each other.

(The _salle des Pas Perdus—_the room of Strayed Footsteps—well deserves its name. For who isn't lost, really, where nobody ever stays?)

Aoko stands there like a stray ship in the eye of the storm, face lifted to consult the timetables overhead. She waits, because of all things she has learnt there is this: that when you wait what you are waiting will always come home to you, eventually.

It does.

Saguru looks exactly the same as he ever did, exactly the same as he did that first time when he introduced himself in her high school class, and that feels a little strange _(because _she_ has changed, and he doesn't know it yet.) _"Aoko."

"Saguru-kun. Did you have a nice trip?"

"Fine," he dismisses, and those pale-gold eyes of his seem to dissect her face and stance, easily, unblinkingly; and the result of that is: "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she echoes, half-lying, and she is just a little afraid.

"Good." (It is satisfying that they do not need many words to understand each other. They are alike, she and he, perhaps too much than their friendship could bear; with Kaito communication is always necessary. She thinks, what Saguru and she have, it's a little fake.

She wouldn't give it up, though. His friendship is one of the few things that anchor her these days. She is (like) a kite, reaching out for the perfect blue of the sky, only to be held back by the strong gold of the earth.)

Saguru is everything her father never could be for her—brother and mother altogether, and that's, that _is_ satisfying.

_(kaitokaitokaitoCOMEBACK)_

It is. It _is, _(and she knows perhaps a little more than she did so many days ago. It's a secret Saguru cannot hear, and that's fine.)

"We've got thirty minutes before our train leaves," he says, the Brit accent in his Japanese slipping as though by unfamiliarity. "I'll go buy a newspaper, if you don't mind." He strolls off, strangely out-of-place in this out-of-place location, strangest in this stranger station.

(A train is a metaphor for departures.

And. What else?)

There is a little too much crowd, a little too much colour. She is treading a thin line of littles, and, well, that's fine too. The light is fine as it falls, as she sets foot past the _salle des Pas Perdus_ and into the actual station—where the trains come and go, come and go—as it falls from the high, glassed ceiling. It is shining across the treaded floor. It is shining, and what a beautiful thing that can be, when one knows where to look.

(A train is a metaphor for departures. And what else?

… death, and,)

She is upset by a passing trolley, and its owner gasps and grabs her elbow to prevent her fall. "Are you alright, _mademoiselle?" _says his voice in heavy English, the French accent within it heady and drumming. It is enhanced by the bark of his dog.

… his dog.

"I'm okay," she manages, staring at him. He's blond, with jaw-length hair, distinctly European, and his clothes are fine and outstanding. His dog is a long-haired affair, whose name she can't for the life of her remember—

_Tout—_

He smiles. "I'm glad. _Bon voyage, mademoiselle." _And departs, with a long look of blue.

(And what else?_ Birth.)_

"Aoko?" Saguru asks, returning to where she stands stilled and smiling a little. (Littles make it a rule. And that's fine.) "Is everything okay? we'd best get in the train now, or we might miss it."

"Everything's fine," Aoko says, because it is, it really is, and follows. She looks up at the ceiling as she passes, the clear ceiling of glass and sky—that early sky that make pale waters and sunshine, without one cloud to fog out the dear blue and the fine light that falls and flows.

It's a beautiful morning.

-

_(a story does not start._

_but then it need not end either.)_

_-_

**And with that's the end. Thank you all, readers, reviewers, lurkers, whoever and wherever you are. I can only hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoy others' fics.**

**I'll probably be posting one or two more drabbles today or tomorrow, and then I'll be gone for a full month. **_**Au revoir, ****dears.**_


End file.
